A Far Distant Future
by Vespaer
Summary: When Claire thinks of "eternity", she views it through the glasses of the present as an unchanging object. What she fails to take into account is the element of "time" - her greatest asset, and the mender of all wounds, no matter how great.
1. Slowly A Prologue

**A/N: I don't own Heroes or anything remotely related and I bow humbly before the television gods, please have mercy on me. Rated "M" for language, some violence, some blood & guts, and eventually some sexual imagery. And please review! If I've massively screwed something up, I'd like to know =D**

**Slowly – A Prologue**

To say they fell slowly is a gross understatement. "_Slowly_", to ordinary folks, would seem to suggest an ordinary concept of time - perhaps the passage of a couple years. Maybe a few more. However, to a timeless being, an ageless wanderer, "_slowly_" is...

Well.... see, that's the funny part, right?

"_Slowly_" is the act of waking up to the realization like a brick to the face, after several centures of an intermittent yet turbulent history together, sitting slack-jawed in amazement thinking, "Oh... Oh _god_... oh dear god, lord in heaven, how did this happen," that things didn't turn out quite like they'd been planned.

She lets the lapping sea foam drag the sand from between her toes, knowing that the next swell will only deposit it back where it came, an endless cycle bearing striking similarity, she contemplates, to the movements of her own life. She ponders the word "_slowly_" as it relates to her while she leans back and tips her head past her shoulders, allowing her hair to pick up stray grains of sand that she knows will only end up buried somewhere uncomfortably in her bathing suit. Until he removes it... and then who knows where the sand will end up. She basks her smile in the warm, pink and golden twilight, unable to suppress a breathy, mirthful giggle as she tips a Corona to her lips.

"What's so funny, Claire?"

Damn those ears, picking up on everything all the dang time.

She rolls her head lazily in his direction and meets his amused gaze - trouble lurking in dark eyes under a darker, furrowed brow. He looks ready to pounce at any moment, muscles tensed with a wicked scheme in his mind, curiosity tugging at the corner of his mouth, holding his breath waiting for her answer. There might be tickling about to ensue... Even after all these years he still looks like he's going to eat her. Warm excitement blooms in her belly as she digs her heels in the sand and bites her lip, ready to spring and give chase, however their game demands she keep the beer in her hand. If she puts it down, she tips her hand that she knows what he's thinking. There will be time to fling it after he catches her and she wraps her arms around his neck. Somewhere in there, yeah.

The only answer he gets from her is a sneer and the quick flash of a pink tongue, then there's sand in his face as she launches from her position, cackling and squealing like a madwoman, pounding her short little legs across the beach, eyes flashing at him over her shoulder. Beckoned by her bouncing hair (and he's totally not looking at her boobs at ALL) he deftly dodges the thrown beer bottle and propels himself after her. Given the advantage he has over her with his height, she proves easy quarry. He decides telekinesis is for pussies as he reaches for her sand-patched skin and thrumming pulse. At some point after his arms circle her waist, lifting her into the air, toppling them both into the surf as a giggling, writhing mass of kisses and limbs, her mind wanders back, asking her the same question again.

"How did _this_ happen?"


	2. Scattered to the Wind

**A/N: So I started writing this before spoilers for the new season started leaking.... soooooo let's pretend that there was some kind of weird warp in the space time continuum and now we're all in this cute little AU together yay party!!!!**

**I don't own Heroes or anything remotely related and I bow humbly before the television gods, please have mercy on me. Rated "M" for language, some violence, some blood & guts, and eventually some sexual imagery. And please review! If I've massively screwed something up, I'd like to know =D**

**Scattered to the Wind**

We live in a vacuum: the more things change, the more they will stay the same. If we remove an element, another will surely take its place. There will _always_ exist those who possess special abilities. There will _always_ exist those who wish to possess special abilities, but do not. There will _always_ exist those who wish to take special abilities away. Chaos will _always_ strive for order.

Shortly after the dissolution of the original Company, and the imminent failure of its doomed, federally-backed descendents (can a government truly hunt its citizens forever without repercussion?), a new entity breathed its first breath - its infancy like an ominous thundercloud, dark and elusive; its distant rumble a promise of mayhem on the horizon, beginning in the distance yet growing slowly on its steady, constant westward march. It was nothing but a cloud until it was upon us, flashing lightning and threatening to devour.

We would learn to fear the rich, intelligent, and curious. Such scientific curiosity was a jagged, ugly, formidable weapon to be wielded by those with ambition on the right shoulder and technology on the left, and a certain amount of disposable income acting as a siege engine. This new entity had no name, no Building 26, no government to regulate or ultimately dispose of it, and certainly took notice when Nathan Petrelli finally disappeared.

~*~*~

Noah Bennett was NOT a good cook. He was an abysmal failure in the kitchen, and a danger to himself and others. In spite of that, Noah Bennett was also the kind of man that would stop at nothing to protect his family, which included prolonging the continued separation from his wife and children, even when the relationship between them was starting to repair. It was clear to him that, regardless of his current path in life, his past (replete with blazing guns, trails of bodies, and mysterious alibis, just to name a few things) was the sticky, magnetic kind with hazardous side effects to those he loved. So, as a result, he was currently burning an attempt at waffles on a Saturday morning while cursing wildly and nursing a singed thumb. Alone.

He gingerly placed his thumb under the cold water from the faucet and, not for the first time in the past ten minutes, briefly thought of Sandra. She was able to make magic with a stove, a sink, and some other minor implements. A wave of sorrow washed over him as he lowered his head to let it rest on the cool countertop. For so many years he had been surrounded by people able to do magic things. And family. He thought of Claire. An exemplary young woman handed an extraordinary set of circumstances, she truly knew how to make lemonade when life handed her lemons. Perhaps she learned that from her mother - although, he added grimly, nothing took care of lemons like a 9mm. She never ceased to make him proud, working to finish her final year in college somewhere smack dab in the middle of the country, close to no one she knew. She had the same idea he had - the more distance she kept around herself, the safer people would be. Maybe she was more like him than he gave himself credit for. Maybe he should call her. Maybe he should just focus on getting some waffles made.

Rising, turning off the faucet, and moving to dispose of yet another failed venture at taking care of himself in a proper manner, he allowed his gaze to travel to the bay window in the kitchen of his modest, Costa Verde apartment, taking in some early morning California sunlight. He had let them all go... just let them all walk out of his life. And they were safe. Glancing at the clock, he determined that it was almost 10:00am in Texas, where Lyle and Sandra were. He was certain they weren't as hungry as he was. He missed Texas.

"I am Batman," he stated simply to himself, his mind drawing a very near comparison, even if the imagery was somewhat comical. His life was full of people with special abilities and, while he possessed none himself, he was still useful and very much alive regardless of their absence. His tools were grim determination, a tendency toward the appearance of ruthlessness where necessary, the ability to keep his wits about him in the face of acute adversity (and _that's_ an understatement), and it didn't hurt to also have really, really good aim. If he hadn't resigned himself to putting down his gun in an attempt to slip into anonymity like everyone else involved in the past few incarnations of the Company (as either an employee or a victim), picking up an ordinary office job and moving into an ordinary apartment while trying to learn how to make some ordinary damn freakin' waffles, well.... well he wouldn't be making any damn freakin' waffles, that's for sure. He sighed.

"How would Batman make waffles..." he muttered to himself, and before he could remember that Batman had an Alfred, his reverie was interrupted by a very vigorous and determined knocking on his front door.

~*~*~

Matt Parkman's gulping breath was a deafening rush in his ears, and he could feel his pulse pounding in his sweating temples as he hurried to get the car packed. Only the bare essentials: clothes, soap, female sanitary junk for Molly and Janice. Several rounds of ammo. Don't panic. He thought of the man who was currently unaware he was the object of his family's destination and laughed nervously at their similarities and their differences. He didn't dwell on it though - he didn't have time. Their lives depended on what little time they had - and also depended on their ability to regroup with Noah Bennett. The chase had begun. Sylar had awakened, and he was very, very angry. And Angela Petrelli was quite dead.

Janice was in the back seat, yelling her demands for answers while she clutched their young son to her in an attempt to console him which only scared him further in the process. His terrified wails were her only competition to see who had the better volume. Matt knew well that they both had an admirable set of lungs. Molly was pale yet kept a stiff upper lip while she pulled on her seat belt in the front. This was not the first time she'd run from a monster. _This_ monster. Janice was becoming more frantic the longer her live-in ex-husband took to respond which was only made worse by the fact that Matt couldn't hear anything over the sound of his own fear and the screeching tires as they tore away from their Los Angeles driveway, never to see that house again. The car became suddenly and uncomfortably silent when Molly turned and whispered her question with a single word.

"Sylar?"

Matt didn't need to answer, no one needed to hear it, everyone knew. He had always known they were operating on borrowed time. Long before he had been coerced into the twisted plot that landed their pursuer into the body and mind of a deceased Nathan Petrelli he had expected to see him come for Molly and her painfully useful ability. Matt knew a man like Sylar would never forget something like that. Even after Angela's and Bennett's perverted plan succeeded, he knew it was only a matter of time before the spell broke and the beast woke up.

Immediately following the events that took place in Washington D.C. Matt brought his severed family together, believing that keeping them close was the only way to keep them safe - so different from Bennett who scattered his loved ones to the wind in an attempt to see them all disappear under the radar. The Bennetts weren't the only ones who scattered. The rest of the group of people he'd come to know as friends, people who had special abilities like he did, had spread to the corners of the earth attempting to build quiet, peaceful existences away from the eyes and ears of those who didn't have their best interests in mind (like psycho serial killers or deadly government organizations for example). The last he knew of Mohinder Suresh he was enjoying a brief sabbatical from a university somewhere in New Mexico to grow some grapes and work on a memoire. Hiro and Ando... well... as long as he didn't over-do it, Hiro could be any place at any time. Peter....

Peter. What were they going to tell Peter?

What were they going to tell Claire?

What were they going to tell Nathan's ex-wife and his other children?

They'd been lying to Nathan's family for five years. How could they have let that happen? What good could anyone possibly have thought could come from it? The only reason Matt had allowed himself to be involved in such a completely demented farce was that he truly believed their actions were a response to grief - a mother's grief... and that it would pass. He believed he was dealing with sane and rational people. He believed that the truth would eventually be offered to those who deserved and needed it, and that it wouldn't be five whole god-forsaken years later when that happened.

And more than that - they had caged a monster for 5 years. Monsters typically don't respond well to being caged - doesn't take a mind reader (like him?) to work that one out. And now that monster was loose - the buzz around the police channels he worked through was that the mother of a famous politician in D.C. had been found partially decapitated in her home - and he knew there were two more names on the list. He felt a wave of nausea hit him as his blood turned to ice. He had dragged his family into this. For a moment he thought he understood Noah Bennett - for a split second he wanted to stop the car, hand Janice the keys, and tell her to keep driving while he sat down waited for his death to come to him. Yet, just as he was a coward five years ago, he was a coward now as he pushed the gas pedal a little harder.

It was at that point he'd noticed how complacent he'd become. For a couple years after they'd returned to L.A. he'd kept a packed bag by the door and never let the gas tank dip down below three quarters of a full tank. He watched the needle bob slightly beneath one quarter and mentally kicked himself. Gripping dents into the steering wheel, he pulled into the filling station on the corner intending to get this errand out of the way as quickly as possible before tearing down the open highway.

"This'll only take a second," he told Janice over his shoulder while somberly exiting the vehicle. As he reached into his back pocket to extract his wallet he felt a prickly cold sensation at the periphery of his usually rather large awareness accompanied by a nearly imperceptible hiss or whine. His free hand reflexively tucked under his jacket to reach for the gun in his holster as he turned a slow half circle.

"No... not here... not now," he muttered under his breath. "Gimme a head start, something, you bastard..."

He scanned the area but saw nothing that would lead him to believe Sylar was anywhere near the area, and the skin on his forehead remained thankfully intact. Perhaps he was just being paranoid. Rightfully, gut wrenchingly paranoid. Making up for precious seconds lost he forced his attention back to his wallet, slipped a credit card out of it, and slid it into the machine attached to the gas pump. Naturally, as was his luck, the machine decided that this was the perfect moment to malfunction and it wouldn't take his card. He made a mad dash inside to pre-pay with cash, and was mulling over what the attendant inside had told him when he exited and saw the shadows on the horizon. There were three of them: human shaped but black - the kind of black that seemed to draw all light and sound into it - like human-shaped black holes. He watched them watching him as he pumped the gas, every nerve in his body tensed for flight.

As he and his family finally sped away, Matt recounted some of what he'd learned at the gas station to Janice.

"That was weird.... thought there was something wrong with the machine, but the gal behind the counter said the card was declined."

A phone call to the credit card company revealed that the card wasn't just declined nor was the account even cancelled. The account simply didn't exist at all.

Matt Parkman simply didn't exist at all.

~*~*~

He had been startled back into his own mind when he had cut himself shaving. Why that _particular_ cut on that _particular_ morning he had no idea. Fate had its own design, and its own roads and intersections. But when he winced his face rippled in his mirror reflection and immediately his mind had been assaulted by a torrent of conflicting images and memories. For a split panicked moment he had no idea where or who he was. As Sylar surfaced, he found himself slumped on the opulent marble tile of the bathroom floor next to a very large bathtub under an equally magnificent sink, pouring over every memory that led him to his current location. What he remembered first was how it felt to live the life of a man who had a family and was easily loved by those who surrounded him. The shock of waking back up to a truth that was so vastly different from that lie, to a life of abandonment, solitude, horror, confusion, and a vicious, unstoppable, and enslaving hunger.... it hurt. Badly. Sylar despised being hurt and _hated_ being lied to. He punished liars. It was then that Angela Petrelli called to invite her son to lunch.

Sylar had work to do.


	3. The Shadow People

**A/N: Omg where's the Sylaire already??? Patience my pet. You shall be rewarded grandly. However, I would like to point out that the opening chapter, small though it may have been, was titled "Slowly". I'd like to think that kinda set the mood, right?**

**I don't own Heroes or anything remotely related and I bow humbly before the television gods, please have mercy on me. Rated "M" for language, some violence, some blood & guts, and eventually some sexual imagery. And please review! If I've massively screwed something up, I'd like to know =D**

**The Shadow People**

To Noah Bennett, there were two kinds of people: expected visitors and unexpected visitors. The expected kind was allowed entrance to his home upon arrival - very simple. The unexpected kind was usually better off dead, dispatched as quickly and as efficiently as possible. While he wasn't exactly talented in the kitchen, that didn't mean that everything wasn't in its proper place. He retrieved the shotgun (he liked to start big) from under the sink and backed himself behind the bar separating the kitchen from the living room. From there he'd have access to a couple .38 caliber revolvers hidden under the recliner and the sofa, respectively, and that would move him next into the hall where he had the taser hiding behind a family portrait, then into the bedroom where he had the 9mm, a semi-automatic rifle, and access to the fire escape. All he had left to do was sit stock-still and wait, the front door lined up in his sights, and the knocking would either subside once his visitor gave up or the door would come crashing in, off of its hinges, when his visitor did _not_ give up, becoming an impatient and unruly intruder - most likely an intruder bent on revenge and a hankerin' for brains, or whatever he could cut first seeing that Noah possessed nothing else the man would want other than a means to exact his vengeance.

The knocking stopped but Noah didn't let that fool him - this wasn't his first rodeo.

He held his breath, trying to block out all other sound, listening for voices or shuffling outside the door, even the sound of someone else breathing - anything that would give away the presence of someone or something on the other side. What he heard gave him a chilled sense of finality. He heard laughter. Soft, menacing laughter. Then he heard his name, and something scratched at the door, sounding as if it splintered the wood. He imagined paint curling and wood particles flying haphazardly as the invisible telekinetic claw raked down its surface. He swallowed his resolve and drew his eyebrows together, as his grip pulled the shotgun tighter into his shoulder and his pupils began to dilate - he was a much better shot under pressure. He knew bullets wouldn't stop this target, but he was damn sure he'd be able to slow him down until he could get to the fire escape - even a superhuman would have a hard time getting around once his legs were shot off below the knee.

~*~*~

Sylar knew Noah well and why he was so easy to find – he was a perfect fit as his next target. Bennett had made no real attempt to relocate himself or change anything about his identity or appearance. That wasn't his style. Sylar knew Bennett would go down fighting, staring his death in the face, spitting in its eye defiantly, calling it ugly names as it claimed him. Sylar assumed he'd lose some chunks of himself in the process as well. That was just the kind of man Bennett was, so unlike Parkman whose death would have its art in the chase itself, not the fight. So unlike Angela Petrelli, who quietly dignified her fate as a life well lived, gracefully handing him her resignation.

By allowing easy access to his person in some small way, he supposed, Bennett could attempt to keep his family safe. Sylar thought to himself, if he had been truly in his right mind he would've tried to find the Bennett family first, drawing out his revenge in a bloody line across the map, wherever they may be hiding. But somewhere between the lingering memories that weren't his and something that resembled the exhaustion of his soul he decided that a more direct approach was probably the best method. He left the Bennett family alone, he didn't have the energy to care. Besides, he told himself, he could always convince Noah he'd tortured or killed them or something before he destroyed him. That could almost be fun...

The chemistry of the hunt was in his nose and behind his eyes, humming in his throat, as he stood outside the door of his quarry, separated by merely two and a half inches of oak and a deadbolt. His mood was improving. He knocked a joyful, sing-song pattern and waited, knowing Bennett wasn't stupid enough to answer. This was a fun game. He was unable to suppress the anticipatory laugh that bubbled from his chest. He tasted Noah's name on his tongue as he showed his prey just how little protection the door provided him by giving it a good scrape with his telekinetic scalpel. He drew a smiley face.

It was true that he took a sort of vindictive pleasure in the smell of blood and the feel of it on his fingertips, but that didn't mean he was a big fan of senseless violence and a whole lot of noise. He didn't break down the door - he tenderly removed the hardware from its hinges and allowed it to fall in on itself.

While Sylar had been on the receiving end of Bennett's experienced and well-practiced trigger finger before, what he _wasn't_ expecting upon entry to the apartment was a projectile of extremely large caliber to pummel straight into his groin, narrowly missing certain items he'd preferred stayed intact. The blast, which blew a hole through parts that were still soft and tender, forced a string of obscenities from his mouth as his wound immediately began to stitch back together.

"GOD DAMMIT, BENNETT! JESUS FUCKING CHRIST!!!" Regular bullets would've proved the point just fine!

Instead of instantly retreating toward the surety of his escape while his would-be killer was incapacitated, Noah let Claire's face enter his mind briefly enough to cause a quick flash of fury and he fired twice more. This time he nailed the left kneecap and right shoulder. Few things sounded better to Noah than the cries of pain elicited by the crawling, bloody pulp on his kitchen floor.

Without a backwards glance, he loaded his last round, blasted a hole in Sylar's right lung, and flung himself into the hallway retrieving the hidden taser. He could hear the growling, gurgling struggle of his pursuer as he approached from the other room. Angry, flashing tendrils of lightning lanced through the hallway, licking up the walls and ceiling like electric flames. Noah narrowly dodged them by tucking his body up against his bedroom doorframe. He held his position as Sylar rounded the corner, a hunched and malevolent figure. Before Sylar was able to unleash another deadly barrage of energy Noah gave him a little electricity of his own - he let the taser do its job. What Sylar received, instead of the larger number of bullet holes he expected, was complete dumbfounding paralysis.

Noah took that opportunity to drop the now useless shotgun and make a mad dash for the 9mm under his pillow. He considered also arming himself with the rifle in his closet, but knowing this adversary could never truly be stopped he thought better of it - it would be a waste of time. He sprung across the mattress to the window, ripped it open, and a blast of fresh air and sweet freedom bloomed against his face as it rose from the fire escape.

He was allowed only one foot to exit the window, a fractional moment of liberation, before an insidious invisible force yanked him back into the apartment and slammed him up against his bedroom wall, high enough to smack his head against the ceiling. The firearm was ripped from him in the same instant. Once the stars cleared from his eyes he recognized his own barrel staring directly back at him.

"You've been a bad, bad man, Bennett," sneered the dark figure, standing with his arm raised, obscured behind the weapon in his direct line of sight.

He considered his options: if he were a different man he could start bargaining, an exercise in futility; he could also simply accept his fate. He decided to speak his mind instead.

"Fine. Have it your way. You can do whatever you want to me, I don't care. I'll die happy just knowing I got _even_ with you."

Sylar, holding Noah in place with an unseen tether, grunted a disbelieving laugh but raised a curious eyebrow. Wounds healed over, he approached his victim.

"You think so?"

"You cracked open my daughter's head and raped her mind. You traumatized her in a way that changed her forever," Noah continued. "Would you classify anything that's happened to you over the past five years any different?"

"Sure. It happened for _five fucking years_."

"Yeah? And what's five years to someone who's going to live forever thanks to what you stole from her?" Noah spat bitterly. "It's a drop in the damned bucket."

Sylar ducked his eyes to the side in contemplation and paused a moment.

"Touché," he admitted at last. "Well, since we're so _even_ and everything, and you know I can't just let you walk away, I suppose I could offer you a way to save your own life."

Anyone else would've felt relief at the sight of the gun slowly pulling away but Noah wasn't just anyone - the same tension binding in his shoulders and causing his breath to come in short rasps still existed. Out of his periphery, from the general direction of the nightstand, a different object progressed along its disembodied trajectory. It halted next to his left hand. After wrapping his fingers around it he realized like a bucket of ice water down his back that what he was holding was a telephone. His gaze re-focused on the gun now cradled in Sylar's outstretched hand. The time had come. He closed his eyes and held his breath, his ears not willing to hear the shots ring, as two bullets scorched agonizingly into his abdomen and one hit him in the chest. In shock, he hadn't registered the impact when his body hit the ground, nor did he watch as Sylar dropped the gun, smiling in grim satisfaction as he turned and left the room.

"You're welcome," he tossed over his shoulder on the way out.

Noah gripped the phone tightly like a life line. He could feel blood rising in the back of his throat. He gagged on it, and knew he didn't have much time. He knew his neighbors well, made every effort to inject himself in their lives - a kindly, middle-aged divorcee getting used to taking care of himself again, with lonely eyes and sorrowful tales capable of bending even the most hardened maternal instinct to his advantage providing him numerous cups of borrowed sugar - and he knew that they would have alerted authorities the instant shots were fired. Help was on the way before Sylar ever thought to press a telephone into his hand, so he dialed the only other person he could think of - coincidentally the first person on his speed dial list.

~*~*~

Sylar was disappointed in himself. He allowed himself to get distracted by Bennett's little even-steven speech and completely forgot to mention how he had supposedly already tortured and killed his family. Damn. He really really _really_ wanted to go into gross, gnarly detail about it as well, after being turned into fried Swiss cheese and all. He hated missed opportunities. Next time.

He halted in his steps as he exited the hallway into the living room. Something was wrong. He then noticed the two black figures standing in the kitchen - black as if they were people-shaped holes in reality. Before he could flick his wrist in telekinetic defense, one of the figures slammed an object down onto the countertop separating the kitchen from the living room. Innocuous red lights flickered and every inch of skin on his body tingled. A high-pitched buzz screamed through his skull, uncontrollably drawing him into a crouch, hands clamped tightly over ears he was pretty sure were bleeding.

He could do nothing but watch in horror as one of the strange figures approached him and placed a different object around his neck, something like a collar. He then felt a prick on the side of his neck - a needle? - and his awareness began to fade to black, as black as the face looming over him.

No weapon in his arsenal of collected abilities responded to him. He was powerless, and completely helpless.

~*~*~

Claire hated finals. Loathed them. _Completely_ _abhorred_ them. She could survive jumping off buildings and plane crashes and nuclear explosions but couldn't keep her body from experiencing the nasty side effects of stress. She mentally reminded herself that she was very near the end of her program and a bright, shiny, exciting career in international business awaited her- the four year degree she managed to somehow turn into five (a couple of semesters in there might've been interrupted by the normalcies of her abnormal life). Next semester would afford her fluffy, leftover elective classes, a lighter workload, fun shopping for the perfect hire-me power suit, exit interviews, career fairs, and then she would be done. Done, done, _done_. Her daydreaming eyes landed on the postcard she'd received from Peter, pinned to her bulletin board on the dorm room wall. It was from Venezuela, where he was currently involved in some kind of mission work. As she lingered over the emerald hills, the top of some misty, mountainous rainforest canopy, the sun setting in the background, she imagined that her life would take her to equally exotic locations, flying in private jets, negotiating corporate structuring in faraway places. Maybe she'd get speak to Spanish.

Her fantasy, which had been interrupting her studies, was in turn interrupted by her ringing telephone.

What she heard on the other end made her hair stand on end. A wet whisper uttered her name, and even though it was difficult to make out she knew her father's voice anywhere.

"Dad?" she pressed, urgently. She didn't receive an immediate response, however she heard voices in the background.

"Got the target tagged and loaded. What do we do with this one? This is a mortal wound, we can't just leave him..."

"I've seen files on him, he could actually be useful. Probably better bag 'im too."

"Claire..." Noah rasped again.

"Get something to stem this bleeding..."

_Bleeding? Mortal wound? What-_

"What's that in his hand-" The line went dead.

Claire immediately leapt up, packed a bag, and picked up the phone to call Hiro Nakamura. Stuff like this always happened to her right before finals...

~*~*~

Janice's fingernails sunk into the molded, vinyl armrest of her car door. The lingering adrenaline in her system was beginning to make her irritable, and watching the panorama of dusty, scrub-covered California hills streak past her window at their current speed wasn't making things any better. Screaming down the highway like this was only going to end in tragedy. She turned to look at Molly, her frown deepening as she started counting the inches between the girl's face and the windshield. She decided to break the tense silence that had accumulated in the vehicle ever since she was able to coax Matt Jr. into that vehicle-lulled sleep that young children often tended to enjoy. She addressed her ex-husband.

"Can Sylar fly? Or teleport?"

"Huh?"

"You know... Can he run at super-sonic speeds? Or... or jump, or whatever?"

"Uhhh... no. No, I don't think so, not yet anyway," Matt responded, looking at her in the rearview mirror. He almost sounded as if he were trying to convince himself of that as well.

"Then is it _really_ necessary to drive this freakin' fast with children in the car?!?"

Matt didn't offer an apology, but didn't argue either as he slightly moderated their speed - it was enough to appease her and allow him to return to his thoughts. Time was of the essence. When Angela Petrelli's body had been discovered it was determined that she'd been dead for a couple days - that gave Sylar a good head start. He could be anywhere. Matt believed in safety in numbers. They had to reach Noah Bennett before Sylar did, or before Sylar reached _them_. It would be easy for Molly to locate Sylar, to see where he was, to know where to avoid, but it wasn't fair to ask that of the girl. It wasn't right to treat her as a tactical advantage, not when using her ability to see the devil traumatized her so badly, and he didn't want to take the chance that Sylar would be aware that he was being located. In turn, he also didn't want to run the remote risk that Sylar would, in some way, be able to locate them as well. Haste was all they had left, and it was paramount.

It was a warm, sunny day and the air just above the horizon, where it met the open stretch of highway, rippled in the way that it does when humidity displays its unusual optical illusion. Matt gripped the wheel a little tighter when, for a second, he thought he saw the image of a figure flicker in that haze. He held his breath as they drew nearer, telling himself it was just a mirage - the invention of a particularly gifted yet feverish mind. Nonetheless, he peered ahead, squinting his eyes as the image began to solidify, becoming another one of the grim black figures he saw while at the gas station. It stood briefly at the side of the highway with its arm outstretched before drawing back, turning, and walking with a slow gait to an outcropping of red rocks where it disappeared.

"What the...." he whispered as the whine he heard once before began to creep slowly back into his ears. "No..." He began to feel a bit like a trapped animal.

Janice and Molly both screamed when the first tire blew, exploding loudly and echoing off of the neighboring rocks. They had run over something littered all over the road, glittering minutely in the sunlight, small enough to remain unidentifiable. The remaining tires howled in protest before they also were torn apart, and Matt fought the steering wheel with the brake pedal to the floor. The vehicle skidded to a stop on its bare rims trailing sparks behind it. Matt Jr., whimpering, crawled into his mother's lap.

"What's happening?!" she exclaimed before she was silenced by a deafening crash that came from behind her, covering her in tiny shards of glass. She protectively curled her body around her son's. Matt whipped around to see two black figures standing outside the shattered back glass. One of them calmly tossed an object through the open space into the car. The object bounced off of the back seat, rolled across the center console, and landed in Molly's lap. The whine that Matt heard earlier became an intensely painful ringing that completely filled his awareness. He squeezed his eyes shut and ground the heel of his palm against his forehead. Molly opened her mouth to scream, tears of terror staining her face, yet no sound escaped her that was audible above the noise emanating from the object. She defiantly started beating it with her fist. Just before her fifth strike the object began to release a greenish smoke that instantly clouded the interior of the vehicle. Matt coughed violently, unable to do anything as he watched a pair of black arms open the passenger side door and place a type of collar around Molly's neck before removing her from the vehicle. He grew weak and dizzy and darkness began to descend upon him, but before he lost consciousness he, too, felt something clamp around his throat – snug yet not intended to strangle. The last sensation he was aware of was being cradled, as he fell backwards out the driver side door, by black hands that were much calmer and gentler than he expected them to be as they kidnapped him.

~*~*~

No one in the park across the street from her father's apartment took any notice when Claire and Hiro popped suddenly into existence, tucked away in the shadow between the scoop of a slide and its ladder. They could've materialized on top of a spinning merry-go-round dressed as a pair of polka-dotted elephants for all it mattered - the park was a silent audience, standing at attention, all eyes glued to the scene across the street. Claire trembled at the sight of the full 911-call turnout, replete with fire trucks, an ambulance, and a cavalry of police vehicles. A small part of her, however, was comforted by the fact that someone had been there for her dad. She and Hiro joined the crowd by the chain link fence and looked at each other. Wordlessly, they both knew what needed to happen - further investigation was going to be required and the police were likely to be less than forthcoming. They exited the park through a small gateway and walked to the middle of the street. Hiro nodded and the world around them stopped dead in its tracks.

Hiro started across the street, Claire behind him moved more slowly. Hiro glanced over his shoulder to make sure she followed, but saw the trepidation on her face - she was terrified of what she'd find inside the apartment. Bravely, she continued forward. She had to know what happened.

They tip-toed into her father's residence, diligently intending not to leave any evidence of their presence behind them. Immediately Claire doubled over with her hand over her mouth - either to suppress a sob or keep from vomiting Hiro wasn't certain. There was a large amount of blood on the floor and sprayed on the walls, and included in the mess were fragments of bone and what could probably be identified as clumps of organ tissue. As Claire pulled herself together she did make note of the important fact that there was no _body_ in the middle of that mess, and the ambulance had not left yet, either to transport a living victim to the hospital or some shredded remains to the morgue. She tried to ignore a little ghost whispering in the back of her mind, telling her she knew someone who could make a mess like this and walk away, however she was really damn sure she saw him burn and float off on a coastal breeze one blessed, blazing ash at a time. She kept walking, replaying in her mind the conversation she overheard in the background of her father's phone call. Whoever had been here had taken her father, but had captured someone else, _also_ in the apartment, as well. But who? And who were _they_?

After moving through the living room and the hallway it became obvious that Noah Bennett didn't go down without a fight. Shotgun shells had littered the carpet and scorch marks ran up the walls and ceiling in the hallway. She stepped over the remains of a spent taser to enter the bedroom where, high in the far corner near the ceiling, was another mass of blood. Smeared trails suggested that the victim had been held in place near the ceiling, shot, and allowed to slide to the floor. Claire's little ghost whispered a little more insistently. Kneeling near a blood-soaked patch of carpet Claire found her father's glasses and the telephone he'd used to place his call. And something else. Against her better judgment she picked it up and turned it over in her hands. It was a piece of paper that, upon further inspection, turned out to be a list of names and coordinates. Hiro joined her, peering over her shoulder. Most of the names on the list they recognized, including their own. A few were crossed off, including Mohinder Suresh, Peter Petrelli, Matt Parkman, and Gabriel "Sylar" Grey. Did this mean that all the names crossed off of the list were dead? Or did it mean...

"Cheerleader, is time to go!" Hiro whispered harshly, as if the stationary people would wake up if he spoke too loudly. Claire nodded mutely and shivered giving a final look to the place where her father made his last stand, then tucked the list into her pocket and followed Hiro out of the apartment. She categorized the unrest she felt while leaving as having to do with the amount of blood coating the floors and walls of the place, and she prayed her father was still alive. She ignored the cold prickling on her skin and slight buzz in her ears, oblivious to the fact that she and Hiro were being watched from across the park.

~*~*~

Janice had incredible difficulty peeling her eyelids open. She rubbed at them, dislodging some kind of grayish-green funk. When the air hit her eyes they stung and watered as she fished listlessly around to refamiliarize herself with her environment. She felt Matt Jr. stir on her lap - she was grateful for the small movement. She sat him up, told him to _stay put_, then stumbled warily out of the vehicle. She gasped and clutched her hand to her heart when an eruption of fluttering feathers launched from the side of the highway as she emerged - vultures. The heat was nearly as oppressive as her frightened sense of isolation. She then noticed something that certainly _hadn't_ been there before - there was another vehicle parked in front of hers. Nervously, she approached and inspected the car; there was no sign that anyone had ever been inside the thing with the exception of the keys that were still dangling in the ignition. Oh, and lookie there - there was something else. A piece of paper lay on the dashboard reflecting two words off of the windshield: DRIVE ME.

For a brief moment an irrational fear lanced through her, making her wonder if the car were programmed with some weird artificial intelligence to take her someplace she'd really rather not go. Logic found her again, though, as she realized that cars really didn't do that in this current century, regardless of the gadgetry she'd already witnessed that day, and if Matt's and Molly's kidnappers had wanted to take off with her and her son they'd have done so already. It wasn't like she could just waste away there on the side of the highway, anyway, so she collected her son, situated him safely in the back seat of the strange new car, then hopped in, started the motor, and continued her journey to Costa Verde. Despite what had happened, Janice had to believe that maybe Noah Bennett could help her or provide her with some answers.

Two hours later she was still in the car parked in front of an apartment building wrapped up tighter than a birthday gift in police tape, all that was missing was the bow. She stared at it, resting the side of her head on her steering wheel, trying not to cry, panic, or collapse in exhaustion. Matt Jr. was complaining about being hungry from the back seat and she tightly suppressed an urge to yell at him - none of this was his fault.

"Soon, honey," she muttered, trying not to allow her voice to be colored by her confusion, fear, and desolation. She couldn't go back home, Bennett's house was obviously off-limits to the general public, and she currently possessed a useless credit card and not enough cash for a hotel room. Her son did bring up a good point: no good plans were ever concocted on an empty stomach.

Stepping into a McDonald's on the corner she was astonished and oddly relieved to see the familiar face of Hiro Nakamura. He was there with a young blonde girl she knew to be Claire Bennett – their heads bowed together, whispering intently. Hiro noticed her approach out of the corner of his eye and they both stood immediately to greet her. It was very plain that he was amazed to see her, but in Claire's expression there was an odd note of desperation. Janice also noticed how pale the girl was in contrast to the dark circles under her eyes. Hiro merely bowed, as was customary of his people, but he was tense with a nervous energy that told Janice he was ready to get moving soon. Janice easily surmised that they had been inside the apartment and that Noah Bennett was at best missing and at worst...

Once Matt Jr. had been placated by chicken nuggets and french fries, a heavy silence permeated the atmosphere as they each regarded each other with sober gazes. The coincidence of running into each other here was too great to ignore. Claire began seeking answers.

"Okay, while this is a very interesting reunion, I gotta ask.... what are you doing here? Where's Matt and Molly?" And, she kept to herself, does your appearance have anything to do with my dad's _dis_appearance?

"That's a longer story. What happened to your dad?"

"He called me, he was in trouble. Sounded like he was dying. His voice was all," she made a rapid hand gesture, "raspy and gurgly. I've never heard him like that before. Anyway," she tilted her head, "I heard voices in the background - two of them, talking to each other. It sounded like there was someone else in the apartment too - they called him the '_target_' or whatever - and they kidnapped him, but they didn't want to leave dad behind because he was apparently wounded and bleeding so they took off with him too. I have no idea who they were or why they were there, but I do know that dad was _attacked_ by someone _before_ they showed up, that apartment is total blood-and-guts-teen-slasher-movie, and now everyone is _gone_."

"The paper," Hiro beckoned, pointing tentatively at Claire's jacket pocket.

Claire relinquished the object of Hiro's attention to Janice, curious to get her input as well. All Janice needed to see was Matt's name crossed off to start putting together a picture. A tiny thread of relief wound unbidden through her, as well, when she noticed Sylar's name was in the same crossed-off condition as her husband's. She had to believe that he had been taken, just like her husband, but this realization also meant some ugly truths were going to need to be voiced to her unlikely companions.

"Claire, I think the same thing that happened to your dad happened to Matt and Molly." She sighed and pressed her hand to her face, willing a nagging headache to leave her alone. "As for why I'm here... this is gonna be a long story, and there're gonna be parts you're... not gonna like..... but this really isn't the place for it. I hate asking," she looked up, plaintively, "but do either of you two have any cash? Matt's bank and credit card companies suddenly think he doesn't exist, and I'm wiped out til payday - all I've got's what's in my purse, and we're gonna need a place to hide and… why are you looking at me like that?"

Claire and Hiro made no attempt to disguise the fear and surprise in their faces. They glanced meaningfully at each other before returning their eyes to Janice.

"Lemme guess. You two don't exist anymore either." It was true – they had tried to secure accommodations for themselves just an hour earlier.

Claire stared resolutely into space and braced herself against the table, every appearance of someone who'd just witnessed a bad accident. Hiro mutely nodded the answer that Janice had been dreading before he asked, "Hide from who?"

Janice paused and stroked her son's hair, missing her ex-husband more than she ever thought she could and worrying for an innocent girl whose young life had a more troubled start than any one person deserved. She gave a name to her nightmare.

"The shadow people."


	4. Suits and Ties

**A/N: At last they meet! Mwahaha! This chapter was fun to write. I'm quickly discovering that Mr. Bennett is lots of fun. Anyhoo, thanks for the darling reviews so far!!! You guys make me happyface =D This chapter also introduces a few original characters - please to be leaving them alone as they are part of a piece of original fiction that really kinda seems to mesh here, oddly enough, so plugged them in to use them for funsies. **

**I don't own Heroes or anything remotely related and I bow humbly before the television gods, please have mercy on me. Rated "M" for language, some violence, some blood & guts, and eventually some sexual imagery. And please review! If I've massively screwed something up, I'd like to know =D**

**4) Suits and Ties**

'_Can't believe they got him too,_' Mohinder thought to himself as he sat frozen against the far wall of his cell, which was the texture and color of a white kitchen cutting board (an image that kept him from sleep on many occasions), in rapt fascinated horror as he watched the unconscious form of Sylar, bound and tied with a collar still fitted around his throat, carried into a cell of his own by two familiar black-suited figures. '_He was the one I thought for sure would get away... if he couldn't, what hope is there for the rest of us?_'

Their cargo having been deposited and untied, one of the figures passed through a doorway at the end of the hall where he pushed a button on a console, one that Mohinder had seen utilized each time they drug their prisoner in and out for whatever the purpose. The clear, plexiglass-like outer wall of Sylar's cell descended from the ceiling, encapsulating him inside his own white cutting board prison. After the two figures had departed, Mohinder approached his own looking-glass wall slowly. He peered down to the opposite end of the hall, the last cell on the right, where he knew Peter to be held. Until Parkman, Molly, and Sylar had arrived, Peter had been the only other person there that he had known. Having nothing else to do but wait for their captors to carry out whatever plans they obviously had worked so hard to put into place, they had, in the meantime, made small talk. Peter had entrusted Mohinder with the knowledge that he had discovered shortly before his arrival (presumably from his mother) his brother was.... not who he had believed him to be. While he didn't speak on it long, there was an unmistakable edge to Peter's voice, one Mohinder easily identified with having possessed it himself once before, and one he understood intently. Peter had plans, and his current state of incarceration was a maddeningly frustrating detour. Peter stopped talking completely when Matt Parkman arrived.

Mohinder gazed at the cell in an attempt to catch Peter's eye or see some sign of what he was thinking, having had the object of his furious vengeance dragged past him in the most vulnerable state either of the two men had ever seen him in. He knew what a bitter pill it was to swallow acknowledging that the playing field between them had been leveled but the game had been postponed. Mohinder could see Peter's legs, bent as he sat on the floor, his back braced against the wall that partially obscured the view - he was as still as the eye of a storm, yet a maelstrom of emotions raged in clouds around him. Mohinder decided he would not press the situation lest he be a catalyst to what would surely be a disaster, and retreated to his spartan white bunk.

After lying in silence for a few moments he pulled his knees against his chest as a pang of guilt and sorrow slid through his insides yet again - this had become somewhat of a ritual. How could he have been so blind? He should have seen it coming when so many of his students at the University where he taught, students he knew to exhibit genetic anomalies resulting in special abilities, were recruited by the same pharmaceutical company in Yuma, Arizona. He shouldn't have been so naive when he was visited by scientists in suits and ties, with jovial faces and beguiling smiles and demeanors implying there was nothing to hide, with seemingly innocent questions about his old research - research he denied nonetheless, however in retrospect he probably could've acted dumber. Could've denied them access to his office, his person, and unknown samples his DNA. Could've stated he was too busy to talk. Could've left town, and never returned. Could've recognized the Cheshire cat for what it was. The visit they paid him was a formality - a chance to see if he'd come quietly, if he could be lured by the promise of a lucrative career with a hugely inflated salary. They had known all along who he was, what he had created, and what he had done to himself. He became to them, however, nothing more than another victim, a man with an ability (born with it or not), once they had what they wanted from him - the key to his success, and his father's list of names.

Not long after he had refused their offer he began hearing about the disappearances of some of his graduates in Yuma. Paranoid, he pulled the plug on his private databases, keeping two mirrored backup copies on external hard disks, and he stepped away on sabbatical to some land in up-state New Mexico where he secretly planned on carrying out further investigation. It didn't take long before this new, malevolent entity decided that if it could no longer hack the University network to get what it wanted, it would just bring Mohinder and his valuable information to _them, _the _hard_ way.

~*~*~

Her father was dead. He had been dead for five years. _Five years! _The person with whom she had finally kindled some kind of weird, detached understanding that passed as a budding relationship, while she was too busy with school and he was too busy with his job and his lifestyle and giving speeches and meeting with lobbyists and making legislation and having pictures taken and shaking hands and kissing babies and _oh my god! _that man was a complete unwitting imposter. And not just _any_ imposter – a complete, raving psycho mass murderer. She didn't want to think of all the times she'd stepped into his office and _hugged_ him… On top of _that_, the man who raised her, loved her, and ritually lied to her was involved in the act of chaining that beast, pulling the Nathan Petrelli clown suit over him. Noah Bennett and her grandmother had lifted the rug while Matt Parkman had swept Nathan under it, and they'd considered themselves rid of a nasty mess, no one was the wiser.

She, Hiro, and Janice had pulled together what cash they had to secure themselves a meager lodging for the night. After Janice had put her young son to bed she had told Claire everything that Matt had confided in her, leading up to their present situation. Claire had been afraid she would scream so she left the room and was still sitting on the curb of the parking lot outside the hotel room door, undisturbed, blinking away tears while an insect lamp zapped somewhere off in the balmy evening stillness. She wasn't angry at Janice and didn't blame her – the only crime she was guilty of committing was to be reticent to hurt someone else. And in truth, after sixteen years of absence in her life, it was difficult to come to know Nathan (the whole turning-your-own-kind-over-to-weird-government-agencies thing didn't help matters much either), and at times she wasn't certain the interest the Petrelli family took in her was completely genuine, but a reciprocal attempt had ultimately been made and it was a gesture that she had appreciated. She hadn't realized how much until now, facing the fact that the relationship with her foster father had diminished into something less pure than it was in her youth, and the reminder yet again that yes, Nathan Petrelli was dead. She pressed her face against knees drawn up to her chest, allowing the collecting moisture on her face to soak into her pant legs before she returned her gaze to the horizon, beyond the highway on the hill overlooking the town of Costa Verde below. It was a nice night and the lights twinkled in the distance – a tapestry of a world completely bathed in blissful, sleepy ignorance. She had lost a mother not long ago, and now felt as though she had lost two fathers.

Except one she could still save if she could discover where he was. And when she found him, she would punch him _so hard_. Oh no, forget that. She'd hit him where it _really_ hurt – she'd tell _mom_.

Finding him, she decided, would be easy - all she'd have to do was leave after everyone was asleep and wait for these "shadow people" to come get her. After all, her name was on that list too. Resting her head on her arms she closed her eyes, the yellow light of the porch light above her head burning a fiery glow behind her eyelids, forcing the image of a incinerating Sylar into her mind. Who did she really see burn? Who attacked her father? Whose blood was all over the entrance to her father's apartment? Who else had been taken by the shadow people? If she just started walking down the road, would _he_ find her first, if _he_ really was out there? She rose to her feet. He couldn't possibly hurt her any worse. She wasn't afraid of him anymore. She started walking.

It wasn't long until Hiro had joined her, having stepped out to check on her in time to see the top of her blonde head disappear around a bend in the road. Upon catching up his face was imploring, curious to know what was going on, but he remained silent. His grasp on the English language had vastly improved since the last time they saw each other, but he was also the kind of man who felt his emotions readily – speaking now would only push him into an unnecessary display. He also recognized that their kind had a new threat and what they needed, more than tears and sympathetic words, was a plan. And Claire Bennett looked for all the world - her back straight, stride purposeful, and gaze like granite – to be a woman with just that. After a few paces, when Hiro had taken notice Claire had not tried to persuade him to remain behind, he found the ability to speak his mind.

"This way leads back to town."

"Yes, it does."

Hiro nodded in assent.

"We go back to the apartment?"

Claire only nodded. Hiro nodded in return.

"You don't have to come," she countered.

After a moment's consideration, he stated, "There is no honor in abandoning you in our quest." He paused. "I don't think you want to be alone anyway."

He was right.

After another span of silence broken only by their soft, determined footfalls and the omnipresent singing of what could've been crickets he said, "We will let them take us, won't we."

He didn't look to her for an answer, he didn't need one. It wasn't a question. She didn't provide him with an answer either – it was understood.

As the stretch of highway they walked began to bend down to deposit them back into the town they'd left earlier that evening Claire grinned in spite of herself – certainly getting kidnapped on the other side of the country would provide her a sufficient enough excuse to convince her instructors to let her re-take her finals…

That was the last thought to pass through her head before the calm night air was broken by cricket song that intensified to an ear-splitting, squealing tone punctuated by small blinking red lights.

~*~*~

The first thing he noticed, before he even opened his eyes, was the pressure of the collar still present around his neck, bobbing uncomfortably around his adam's apple when he swallowed… which , incidentally, was difficult. Like, _something's_ _in the way_, difficult. Around the same time he felt strain in his wrists and shoulders which told him he was hanging spread eagle, and he heard a pair of voices in the same space with him. Sylar was nothing if not fearless – he risked opening his eyes. When his vision swirled into something not quite focused and almost liquid, moving like waves, his awareness of his environment became much more pronounced, like a switch had been turned on. There were sounds of machines performing gruesome tasks, smells of chemicals or lubricants or rubber tubes or even body fluids, and pain. Spreading, aching, invasive pain. _Everywhere_. A groan escaped him as nothing more than a choking wheeze – there was a tube down his throat, which had caused it to become chafed and unnaturally dry. He weakly began to gag. A nauseous sense of déjà vu dissolved into the stark realization that this was the sixth time he'd woken up here today, and reality began to swirl around him a bit faster.

"Shit, where's Tierney? The subject's becoming lucid."

"Who cares? You know who this guy is, right? Sure his buddies think he's got a lot worse comin' to him. Hand me that disk, I wanna compare these readings to the last one." Shuffling noises, vision of two men in white coats. "So, speaking of buddies, how come we keep taggin' this one?"

"Because," declared a new voice belonging to a statuesque and severe looking blonde woman who had entered at that moment, easily crossing the room from the doorway in long, confident strides to tenderly cup his chin in her hand, turning it as she investigated his condition clinically. He guessed this wasn't Tierney. "This one is _special_." He didn't find that statement to be too awful damn funny. "If we can understand how his ability works, then we can use that to understand how the others work. Everything would move along much more quickly."

Stepping back, but not before giving his face a final sickly sweet stroke, the newcomer joined the two men in lab coats to oversee their progress. Sylar took the opportunity to take stock of his situation. He looked down at himself, as much as his restraints would allow, and discovered he was shamelessly naked and had tubes running from every hole in his body – and some of the holes were new, angry-looking wounds with seeping gauze. His skin was a patchwork of tested areas – he supposed to see how his DNA would react to certain triggers, regardless of how incapacitated his abilities currently were. He imagined samples had been taken, and currently he was being pumped full of….. something. He didn't know. Something that would change him? Test him? Ultimately kill him?

The collar. It was the _collar _that kept him from healing, and kept him from doing a whole mess of other satisfyingly unsavory things. He didn't understand how these people could create a simple device that rendered him so completely harmless, yet could still be unable to determine how his ability actually worked. He didn't have time to understand – another white-coated individual, this one a mousey young woman, briskly walked into the room brandishing a hypodermic needle. As she approached she squeezed a small arc of the syringe's contents into the air, briefly capturing the dim light in its movement creating a sinister momentary rainbow.

"Sorry, Prince of Darkness, time to go night-night," she whispered in his ear as she injected him. Before he slipped away again he wondered what he'd see the seventh time he opened his eyes…

~*~*~

He saw Claire. Behind the glass, across the hall, like an unnaturally sterile zoo exhibit. Her face was contorted with rage, and she was yelling at someone. He couldn't hear a word she said, couldn't hear anything except maybe his own pulse and his shallow, ragged breath. With all her might she drew back her arm, squeezed her eyes shut bracing for impact, and all the muscles in her upper body flexed, the light playing sinewy shadows across every contour of her strong and vibrant body. Her fist crashed into the glass and small traces of blood popped from her knuckles painting a work of art for him to appreciate. The percussive event pummeled his eardrums and woke them up slightly. He thought he could hear her breathing now, too – pants of frustration and malice. She was an angel of war, she was. A valkyrie. Suddenly desperate to connect with her, like praying for mercy before some saving grace, he lifted a shaky finger to his own glass, tracing the line of her clenched jaw. He left behind a trail of something he couldn't – didn't want to – identify, and the movement in her peripheral vision snapped her eyes to meet his.

She lightly curled her top lip into a sneer. The look she favored him with was cold and hard as her eyes bored holes into his, but it wasn't quite angry – she was too angry with someone else at the moment to focus her anger on him. While he was certainly aware that it would be directed toward him later, and he was happy to let it (she was her most stunning when furious, after all), he let the thought warm him and a smile drifted briefly across his face as he closed his eyes and went back to sleep on the floor.

~*~*~

She had made yet another rash and stupid decision. She had gotten herself _and_ Hiro trapped, her father nowhere to be found, completely defeating the purpose. No matter how much noise she made, no amount of screaming and swearing and punching and kicking and tantrum-throwing had caused their captors to pay her a single ounce of attention. She was fairly certain she had just broken a bone or two in her hand. And, to top it all off, she was across the hall from _him_. _Of course_. Just fucking great. She thought back on the time when she and her moms had gotten into a bit of trouble with the puppeteer man. This situation felt a lot like that. Pressing her uninjured left hand to her face she stepped slowly backwards until her knees hit the side of her bunk. She sank down onto the edge of it. Somehow, someway, she absolutely _had_ to start thinking things through completely before making decisions. Seriously.

She gradually became aware of a sensation spreading through her broken fist. It was a feeling she had forgotten, having grown accustomed to its absence. She stared down at her knuckles – swollen, pale from trauma, the skin broken and crusted with drying blood. It wasn't healing and she _hurt_. It was absolutely fabulous – it felt like being _alive. _She prodded it gingerly and relished the waves of white hot pain that put tingles in her tear ducts. It was almost like feeling a long departed lover.

Her introspection was interrupted by the sound of someone murmuring. She scarcely recognized the voice as Molly's, her fear driving her to quiet hysterics. Claire stood and approached the glass in an attempt to seek her out. She suppressed a wave of numbing resentment when she heard Matt Parkman somewhere speaking out to her.

"Molly, honey, talk to me. What's going on."

She looked down the row of cells, trying to find the source of the voices, looking for familiar faces… well, some _other_ familiar face than the one across from her. There were a handful of other people occupying cells to her right, none of whom she knew: a tall willowy blond girl; a short, slim brunette woman with expressive green eyes; and a tall, dark, lithely muscular man. She heard Mohinder's voice from somewhere to her left call out.

"What is she saying?"

She couldn't resist the temptation to speak out as well. "Mohinder, is that you? Hiro, are you here?"

"I am here, cheerleader," she heard him somewhere in the distance even further to her left.

"She's saying something about being… lost… there's no ground," Matt related, faithfully focused on the girl.

"Claire?"

"Peter!"

"I know how she feels. This is the most quiet my mind's been in years – it's almost like being blind. It's frightening. I think she's going through something similar. It's okay, honey, I'm right here. Mo's here too."

"Claire, are you alright?"

"Peter what's going on? Why are we here?"

"I think Dr. Suresh can answer that," said the green-eyed woman. The chorus of voices ceased, anticipating his answer.

Mohinder allowed a lull of silence while he drew in a tight breath.

"I don't know what they want with us as a collective, but I do know that they wanted my research. I don't believe they intend to use it, but I think they want to build upon it. They believe my results to be too unpredictable and chaotic. Not to mention there were some… side effects."

"You think they're trying to create something that will grant abilities to others?" Matt asked.

"I can tell you personally, it's a very attractive prospect. Something I'm sure someone would pay a lot for. And, you know, I didn't exactly do what I did for no reason at all. Yes, I think that's exactly what they're up to - however they're going a lot further than I did. I think they're trying to pinpoint specific abilities in an attempt to reproduce them. When I injected myself with my serum, the only thing I knew was that I'd gain _an_ ability – I had no idea what it would be. I think they'd like to make the process no longer random."

"Which is probably what they want with us," Claire added. "They want to study _our_ abilities in order to discover how to give them to someone else. They want to know how they work."

"I think so, yes."

"So then," Matt began, "how come Captain Karma over there's the only one who's been in the hot seat a lot lately?"

"He wasn't the first one," the green-eyed woman answered again. Feeling eyes turn to her, the ones that could see her, she nodded down to the end of the hall, last cell on the right – Peter.

"It's true," stated Peter. "They plucked me right out of the mission hospital – I was in the middle of treating a spider bite on a six year old girl. When I got here Mohinder and his students down there were already here, but they didn't know what was going on or what they wanted with us. Several hours later they came and drugged me and dragged me off. When I woke up…" He paused, chilled by the memory. Claire thought he might not be able to go on but he continued. "When I woke up I imagine I looked a lot like _him_, and I heard them talking. I think they originally wanted to study my ability in order to determine how to study everyone else's ability, but my ability works through some sort of tactile imprintation process, there's '_no real understanding_' there – at least that's what they said, something like that. I think they'd just brought Sylar in because they were excited to work with him – something about his capability to understand complex systems."

"Yes," Mohinder assessed, "with his ability they can truly understand how our abilities work – would save everyone a lot of time."

"That's why he cuts our heads open…." Claire breathed, grimacing at the memory and the pang of survivor's guilt. No one answered her, except Molly.

"You don't think they're going to do that to us, do you?"

The response she received was a long, hoarse, guttural chuckle emanating from the cell across from Claire. Sylar struggled to pull himself onto his cot – a tortured bag of bones clad in nothing except what resembled a hospital gown. He was obviously freezing cold and very sore, dark shadows adorned his gaunt face, and his hair had been closely clipped, shaved in some patches where small wounds still glistened, coated with some unidentified ointment. He balled himself up tightly in his blanket before muttering, "That would be a _huge_ fuckin' disappointment."

~*~*~

Noah jerked awake, hands outstretched, searching for a weapon, had to put that son-of-a-bitch down for _good_ before he got too far away, why was everything so blurry… damn. He lost his glasses. And he couldn't really move his arms. Blinking a small amount clarity back into his vision, he was able to discover he wasn't where he thought he was – heavily bandaged, strapped into a hospital bed in a dark sterile room, hooked up to intravenous drugs, and naturally being monitored across a wide spectrum of different body functions. A voice in the back of his head screamed at him to slow that breathing and control that heart rate – _don't draw attention, do it NOW_. Old training eased him quickly yet assuredly into a perfected meditative trance, one that would allow him to bring his body back into a state that would convince his monitors that he was still asleep. He focused on the prompts his old instructor had used to drill him – a soothing, innocuous panorama of rocks, a river, and some trees. He counted the rhythm of his breathing, employing an amazing amount of discipline to hold it steady at the correct rate, and he could feel his pulse diminish into a near-dead calm.

Still counting his breaths, and without losing track, he slowly ventured to reopen his eyelids. He investigated what was going on with his arms – as he'd suspected, they were held in place with leather straps. The leather made him happy – if he had been held in place by handcuffs that would've been a bit more of a challenge. Leather, however, he knew how to escape; it was easier to maneuver when it was cold and dry. He gently dropped his hand over the side of his bed and let the natural environment of the notoriously chilly infirmary do its magic. Most people in his position would rush the escape in blind panic, however Noah knew all the rookie mistakes that were bred by impatience. After a painfully long time he drew his frigid hand back against the leather strap - maintaining an accurate count of his every breath, every heartbeat - just to the point that the fleshy part of his palm applied pressure against it.

Noah had been a small-framed, flexible, wirey sort of child when he was little. As a result, there were aspects of his training that he was better at than most, making him an asset to his instructors – this included the ability to conform his body to confined spaces. Moving with the speed of a predator stalking a bird, he contracted the bones in his hand contorting them into an unnatural arrangement that would allow his hand to slip through the binding. The years that had passed since he'd first started putting his body through these techniques had made the effort a tad more difficult but with patience and perseverance he was successful.

With agonizingly slow movements he continued counting and released his left hand from its hold, and then removed the IV from his right hand. Once free, he turned his blurred gaze to the table next to the bed. When his left hand finally made its way to the top of the table, he made a lengthy investigation of all the items that littered its surface. It wasn't long before he came into the possession of several scalpels and other surgical instruments and the stretchy rubber band of a tourniquet. He tied the band across the width of the bed, stretching it taught and padding the middle of its length with a wound ball of gauze. Having fashioned himself a wicked slingshot and armed himself with lots of sharp ammunition, he was ready to remove the monitoring sensors. He ripped off the cords and waited.

Although his imperfect vision was somewhat of a handicap, it wasn't the first time he'd shot a weapon with it – that was a scenario he'd played over countless times in the past. The first two black suited guards in the room were dropped and wounded easily, having been stabbed by flying scalpels, and in no time they were bound by the leather straps on the bed, bleeding as they were disarmed and one was disrobed. He still wished he had his glasses, but at least now he had a pair of guns and a really awesome black suit of his own. It was time to get out of there.

~*~*~

The sound of the opening door roused him from a restless sleep filled with dreams in which he froze to death. He propped himself onto his elbows, suddenly eye level with two very familiar firearms. The same mousey-headed lab technician rounded the corner into his cell readying her syringe behind his black-suited guards. The routine continued until a small voice broke it. Claire.

"They won't kill you, Sylar. You're too important to them."

One of his guards partially obscured his view of her, but the one eye he saw he made deliberate contact with.

'_Fight them_,' she mouthed to him. Mohinder, in his cell next to her, crowded into the closest corner to get a better view of what might happen.

The technician gripped his arm; he turned to look, and watched the tip of the needle graze his skin. Claire smacked her open palm against the glass, demanding his attention. He looked to her plaintively – she wasn't going to take no for an answer.

'_You are SYLAR_,' she mouthed again, '_FIGHT THEM_.'

A moment passed between their eyes, a meaningful gaze held steadfast, her hands pressed to the glass – this girl whom he had tortured, whose family he'd killed, was putting aside everything and was counting on him now, he was her last hope. How could she put her faith in him? What if he let her down?

With his first small, weak movement he defiantly jerked his arm away from the needle. The barrel of one gun ground into his forehead, the other his left temple, as the technician grappled more tightly for control of his arm. She tried to give him an impatient glance but what she received from him in return made her freeze.

He did nothing to hide every sick, venomous ounce of murderous intent in his eyes – he gave that woman all of it before he shoved her back. She was stunned, and like lightning he shot out a hand to steal the syringe from her, then swung it around to plunge the offending item into the neck of the closest guard. He was glad to have one less gun to deal with.

"Shoot him!!!!" the technician yelled while struggling to retrieve the weapon of the fallen guard. He kicked the woman with his right leg squarely in the stomach and was turning around to make an attempt at wrestling with the remaining black suit when the man lowered his gun and shot him in the leg; he was pretty sure he felt the bone crack. Sylar dropped low and cried out in agony, knowing the wound was deep and if he didn't get this damned collar off he would bleed to death. Crazed with desperation and an unfulfilled need to maim something, he lunged into the guard who shot him, toppling them both down onto the bunk. He growled and clamped a hand onto the other's, lifting the gun high into the air before pummeling into the man's face with his free hand a series of rapid, unstoppable blows. The guard reflexively shot two rounds into the ceiling before losing consciousness. Sylar ripped the gun out of his hand and whipped around at the same time the lab technician found the loose weapon on the floor. She had the hammer cocked and was ready to pull the trigger but a bullet found her first. Her body fell and remained very still.

Sylar collapsed to his knees on the floor, wheeling around, his outstretched arms still claiming the gun, sights narrowing a shaky path to the forehead of a black-suited newcomer – one who still held a smoking gun, having just shot the mousey-headed woman. The black suit held up his other hand in a placating gesture, and lowered his weapon slowly. Sylar could hear nothing but the sound of his own gulping breaths over the shots still ringing in his ears. He held his position, wide-eyed. He wasn't the kind that went down easy, and he trusted no one.

The black suit touched an unseen button on his chest and the material covering his head disappeared revealing the face of Noah Bennett.

"Dad!"

"Funny thing, running into you guys here," he said. Sylar hadn't moved. His face was a mask of quiet fury, jaw clenched, eyes hard. Noah cocked his head to the side and presented him with an incredulous look that said, '_you've already shot me once and I just saved your life_.'

"You could bury the hatchet, buddy. Be a hero for once."

"Sylar." Claire's voice rang like a gentle chime. He still didn't move, but she knew he heard her. An alarm started sounding – it was deafening. She raised her voice. "It's gonna take all of us to get out of here. Put the gun down, let's go."

He still hesitated.

"Put it _down_."

She was firm but sweet. And she was right. He complied, suddenly exhausted and very dizzy. He fell backwards onto his butt and the hand holding the gun dropped to the floor into a pool of his own sticky warm blood. Noah made a quick step forward and kicked the weapon away from him, smearing a bloody trail. Kneeling in front of him he produced a small tool that he used to remove the collar from Sylar's neck. Every wound, every mark on his body, began to immediately disappear. He closed his eyes and lay back, enjoying the sweet relief that was almost enough to put a tear in his eye, never before so glad he'd met Claire Bennett.

Noah wasted no time.

"Need yer help." He yanked Sylar unceremoniously to his feet and backed them out the door he'd come in, stepping over the bodies he'd left sprawled in there (which earned a sarcastic "tsk tsk" from Sylar). "You figure shit out," Noah said, "that's your thing. So, figure out which button to push to open those cells."

Sylar fixed him up with a fiercely menacing glare, ready to telekinetically fling the man as far and as hard as he could and make a run for it – really, who would _actually_ be able to stop him _now_, right? – but damn if he didn't become distracted by the system panel Noah presented to him. Completely betrayed by a nagging hunger for knowledge, one that continually won nearly all of his private internal battles, what he saw before him was a puzzle begging to be solved. He was powerless to resist it. Entering a euphoric trance of imminent discovery, he let the presence of all others drift away from him, completely focused on the object of his ministrations, and he used his favorite stolen power to delicately remove the paneling from the console to get at its heart – had to see how it worked. Following wires to soldered connections, tracing etchings across circuit boards, ignoring Noah's frantic whispers saying '_hurry up, they're coming_,' he determined which button to push. Eyes alight, grinning with boyish eagerness, he jammed it with his thumb _dying_ to see if he was right.

He was.

Noah bumped his shoulder as he raced back into the hallway that had become alive with motion once the glass walls began to retract, freeing the prisoners. He immediately set to work removing collars. Sylar remained where he was, still transfixed by his natural ability, before he felt a small, warm hand clamp onto his arm. A light breeze carrying the scent of roses snapped him back to reality.

"You're coming with me. We're gonna be a meat shield," Claire ordered forcibly, not exactly looking happy about the prospect. He was about to protest but the look she gave him silenced him. She wasn't going to back down and he wasn't going to be able to persuade her. Perhaps safety _was_ better in numbers, he supposed as he let her lead him through the gathered crowd of people. On their way he heard her tell Peter, "Bring up the rear, will you? Since you can heal too, let's protect these people." With Claire's fingertips poking bruises into his arm he kept his eyes downcast, avoiding Peter's gaze, but he felt a vindictive charge of energy rip across his back. Peter matched him, power for power, and would have his revenge at the first opportunity, but for now he was biding his time.

Trading with her dad his glasses for one of his firearms, she pushed Sylar forward with a command, "_GO_," intending to follow him while she proceeded to load a new clip into the gun. Fiddling with the stiff, heavy device while she walked, she continued forward out the door at the opposite end of the hall until she collided with a warm, solid wall of Sylar. Looking up to see what his problem was, she witnessed a sight she'd never seen and wasn't sure she'd ever see again. His face was agape with unabashed horror – eyes as wide as dinner plates, jaw completely dropped open, a trembling hand rising to point at what appeared to be a window or viewport. Following his line of sight she nearly dropped the gun in shock. From somewhere behind her, she thought she heard one of Mohinder's students mutter, "Oh my God…"

What they all witnessed was a rather lovely view of the Earth from space.

From fucking _space_.

"Holy shit….." Claire breathed. "How the hell did we get up _here_? And why are we shooting _guns_?!? Who brings a fucking _gun_ to space?!?"

Behind her, she could hear Hiro swallow thickly as all eyes turned to him for help. And for the first time, like, _ever_, Sylar was really very _extremely_ glad he hadn't killed this one…


	5. A Slow Dance With the Enemy

**A/N: Wheee this was a toughie to write! Lots of action in this chapter. I tried to give it the feel of motion without rushing to quickly. Please let me know if you think the pace was all wrong =D And have no fear - while it appears I'm mercilessly torturing Sylar (he's not exactly a great guy, after all) I promise good things are on the horizon for him!**

**I don't own Heroes or anything remotely related and I bow humbly before the television gods, please have mercy on me. Rated "M" for language, some violence, some blood & guts, and eventually some sexual imagery. And please review! If I've massively screwed something up, I'd like to know =D**

**5) A Slow Dance With the Enemy**

NO. Nope. No freakin' way. Not gonna happen.

While it was true Hiro had jumped several centuries into the past once, that was a long time ago, and the distance he covered….wasn't _anything_ like this, so it didn't count. He had a new rule now – he was never going to jump _to_ or _from_ anywhere he could actually _see_ the curvature of the earth. _EVER_. And certainly not with this many people in tow. He tried not to imagine what it would feel like to accidentally miss and blink them into that cold, inky killer blackness… Would the pressure differential pop their eyes out like Arnold Schwarzenegger and that girl at the end of '_Total Recall_'? Maybe it'd be different if Ando were here with his Red Lightning of Super Power Super-Chargey-ness to give him a little boost but hindsight was always twenty-twenty. When Claire had called him, he didn't think for a minute that he wouldn't just be _right back_ so he left by himself. Shame on him for forgetting nothing was ever that simple when it came to the Bennetts.

He met the eyes that had landed heavily on him with apology. It wasn't that long ago, only five years or so he thought, that he'd learned even he had his limits and he had to abide by them.

"Cheerleader, is too far… too much risk…"

"Guys, logic must dictate," Mohinder stated, "if we got up here, then there must be a way down, and –"

"They're coming," Sylar breathed. "I can feel them…. they're all around us…."

Claire met her father's eyes as they both tugged the slide mechanisms on their weapons, loading the first round into the chamber.

"I can make them stop seeing us," Matt spoke up.

"I can camouflage us too," the blonde student offered, nodding her head.

"That won't do much good when they come charging through here and trample all over us," Claire countered.

"I could disintegrate them," Sylar chimed enthusiastically and was promptly ignored.

"Cheerleader," Hiro said, "I'm not useless yet – let them come. I freeze them!"

Hiro was proud of himself – this was a fabulous idea. Several of his companions agreed with him. They had enough time to crowd together before the thunderous sound of a black-suited herd reached them. Claire spread her arms wide and took two shots to the lower abdomen, protecting several people behind her, as one of the men opened fire; her face was set with grim determination and she never flinched. They were non-lethal shots, she noticed. Somewhere behind her, Peter howled as he, too, took a bullet so that someone else didn't have to. The cacophony stopped abruptly the very instant Hiro performed his powerful blink. Self-satisfied, he smiled hugely, turned a wide circle and asked, "Which way we go?"

"Well, let's see…" said Matt as he approached one of the men. He placed his hands on either side of his head and closed his eyes in concentration. In the meantime, Claire plucked the misshapen chunks of metal out of her skin and turned to her dad.

"So, what _is_ up with the suits anyway?"

Noah fingered the fabric he wore and said, "I haven't tested the theory yet, but I think they're like exposure suits, intended to help protect them from, you know…_you_ guys. Fire, radiation, lightning -"

"_Lightning_ – alright, sure, let's definitely test that theory -"

"You'll need a lot more than _that_ you goddamned piece of -"

"_Peter_," Claire cried as she placed herself in front of Sylar to diffuse a potentially volatile situation. "This can wai-"

"I've got it!" Matt rang triumphantly. "This way, follow me!"

Hiro was glad to get moving. He was even happier, after sprinting through a series of corridors which ultimately gave him the impression that the space station was circular in shape, to reach a large open area containing two crafts that were very obviously designed for flight.

"Yatta!" he cried, fists in the air.

Sylar approached the nearest vehicle and knelt beside it. Completely enthralled, he ran his hands along its smooth hull stopping near the bottom where it became instantly noticeable that it was not resting on any sort of landing gear – it was hovering.

"These are magnets," he said, voice hushed with fascination. "They would work against the earth's natural magnetic field. Its repulsive force lifts the craft and… yes, here – there are capacitors and circuitry here that take that force and turn it into energy that gets fed straight back to the magnet, making the repulsive force stronger, and -"

"Can we use that to slow us down as we re-enter the atmosphere?"

"Claire," he said mockingly, tilting his head toward her, "_every_ space craft re-enters the atmosphere as a _glider_…"

"Is that even an _answer_?"

"Guys, whatever," Matt said, already loading Molly, Mohinder, Peter, and two of the three students into the farther of the two vehicles, "let's figure out how to get these things started and go."

Hiro turned to board the nearer craft when a ringing shot forced him to duck and freeze. Looking up, he saw a hot, melted bullet flattened against the glass of the shuttle's viewport, stuck in place.

"Well, I feel a bit better about the guns now," he heard Claire say as he whipped around to see black-suits, unfrozen and angry, swarming into the hangar.

"Movemovemove!!!!" he heard someone yell, and he saw a vaguely man-shaped blur zipping through the moving throng – punching, kicking, something that made the door close, disarming weapons. He believed it was the male student. _Another speedster_! That was all he needed to see before he jumped into the craft, found a seat, and strapped himself in. He was quickly joined by Noah, Claire, Sylar, and the green-eyed girl.

"Anyone know how to start one o' these things?" Noah asked calmly.

"I think I can help with that," the green-eyed girl said as her body seemed to slightly expand, taking on a somewhat transparent appearance before she completely dispersed into a cloud. She funneled into the control panel of the craft, which then immediately roared to life. As they watched the cloud streak out toward the other vehicle, Claire asked a more important question.

"What about the hangar doors…"

"Pfff, please." Sylar didn't hesitate, lifting his hands and spreading them apart with his unspoken command. The large doors opened into an antechamber complete with its own gateway.

"The room must be required to equalize pressure," Sylar supplied as the green-eyed girl walked through the hull of the shuttle like a ghost, re-solidified herself, then got strapped in.

"We're smooth sailin'," she said, "all those dumbasses are runnin' for the hills."

"They don't want to get sucked out when we open the outer gateway," Noah commented as he took a seat at the rear of the shuttle.

Through the viewport Claire could see Mohinder's male student already at the helm of the other craft, steering it around ready to take it out.

"Damn he's fast. Does he know how to fly?"

"Craig?" asked the green-eyed girl. She laughed and shook her head. "He knows how to do _everything_."

With that, Claire eyed Sylar meaningfully, implying that she knew someone _else_ who knew how to do a lot of things.

"How hard can it be…" he said as acquiesced to her silent demand and took a seat at the helm. After experimenting with some controls the craft lurched forward violently, flinging Claire into the co-pilot's seat with as much grace as a drunken trapeze artist. Without looking back to be certain all of the black-suited footmen had made it safely out of the hangar (and, truthfully he really hoped some didn't), Sylar raked his hand through the air, throwing open the final gateway. He and Claire watched as the other shuttle's engines burst into blinding white luminescence, thundering with a power that made their teeth rattle, and then it tore out of the hangar with bewildering speed into the empty freedom of space.

Sylar grasped a lever, tossed a cocky smile over his shoulder, and said, "Fasten your seatbelts, it's gonna be a bumpy ride!" He gave the lever a good yank and they were gone.

Hiro was pretty sure the ghost-girl next to him screamed something like, "_YEEEHAW_!" He was a little less amused, having been smashed into his seat by the force, and he bumped his head into the bulkhead behind him, blinding him with disorienting spots. The sensation lasted a fraction of a second, however, before his stomach flipped a complete somersault inside him. They had exited the artificial gravity field of the hangar and had immediately begun to float like people do in zero gravity, regardless of the straps cinching him to his seat.

Between the two shuttles he was sure he wasn't the _only_ one that threw up…

~*~*~

On an upper observation deck a statuesque, severe-looking blonde woman sipped a steaming cup of tea while she calmly watched the exodus. She was joined by two individuals in white lab coats.

"Dr. Rogers, the -"

"Did Buchanan program the landing coordinates into the shuttles after their last use?"

"Yes. Yes ma'am, he did."

"Good." She took another sip. The sound of clinking china dissected the tense silence. "Please alert the ground team that our guests will be arriving shortly, and that I would like them…._seen to_."

"Yes ma'am." With that, the two individuals departed, leaving her alone once again to her thoughts. While the temporary loss of their subjects certainly confronted her with an irritating delay, she couldn't claim that it had been completely unforeseen – after all, these were not _normal_ individuals they were dealing with. What had her interest piqued, however, was that shortly before the target known as "Sylar" had made his escape a strange marker had been discovered in his blood. Perhaps one day she would have the time to look into it further.

~*~*~

"I saw how you looked at her," Claire growled, her voice hopefully thick with warning.

"Huh?"

"That girl. Cloud-girl with the green eyes."

"Ah."

"Don't get any ideas. Seriously, I'd hate to have to kick your ass in front of all these people."

Sylar chuckled, and favored her with a sideways glance and a raised eyebrow. They both knew she was no match for him, but who couldn't own a healthy appreciation for that kind of bravado.

"My dear, I don't know what gave you the impression that I was having any _ideas_."

"Yeeeeah, like I'm stupid or someth -" She was interrupted by a monstrous shudder that rattled furiously through the shuttle. Bright light and heat forced her to bring a hand up in front of her face in vain protection. Flames began to scorch the hull and it became apparent they were breaching the earth's outer atmosphere. _Almost home_.

"You think you can land this thing?"

"We're about to find out…"

_CRAAACK! _

_What the fuck was that?_

Their eyes met instantly, wide with fear, mouths open. Simultaneously they turned to the source of the noise. Spider-webbed cracks were spreading in jerky paths across the viewport from the point where the bullet was lodged in its surface.

"Son of a bitch, see? I told you. Who brings a fucking gun to space."

A fraction of a second before the viewport shattered Sylar grit his teeth and squeezed his eyes shut, resigned to do something he knew he'd never live down. Claire yelped when she felt herself ripped out of her seat by an invisible force and thrown like a skipping stone into the rear of the vehicle. She slid across the floor until she hit the rear wall. She blinked her vision straight and looked up in time to see the hatch between the cockpit and the passenger section of the shuttle slam shut. She heard the hatch seal into place with a hiss and then she gasped. There was the terrifying snapping sound of breaking glass. And then there was the roar – ferocious, howling, rushing fire and flooding air. The shuttle quaked like it wanted to fly apart, tossing her body haphazardly. She clamped her hands over her ears, she didn't want to hear it.

She didn't want to hear the sound of someone's weight crash up against the hatch. She didn't want to hear, mixed into the insanity of their freefall, the sound of a man screaming – a man who wouldn't die, but could still feel pain.

~*~*~

Dr. Rogers' introspection was interrupted a second time, however this particular occurrence was absolutely unforeseen and involved a lot more yelling and heavy breathing. Her arm jerked in surprise at the unexpected cry of her own name, aurally assaulted by a scientist that had just clambered through her doorway, causing her to slosh a small amount of tea out of the cup where it landed with a wet _plop_ onto her right shoe.

"Dr. Rogers! Something's happened to one of the shuttles! We've lost contact with its console, its guidance systems are toast! We're gonna lose them!"

"Have the ground team ready some away personnel and set up a search grid. I want them found."

She wished her tea were something a tad stiffer…

~*~*~

He felt like a bug on a windshield. Of a car that was on fire. Travelling at several hundred miles per hour. His eyes remained tightly shut, unwilling to watch his skin char black and flake away only to sear the angry pink skin underneath. In all honesty, he'd already gone totally numb from shock, but he screamed to keep his airway open, terrified that if he stopped the pressure would crush his rib cage. He fought with every tenuous thread of energy he had left to keep the telekinetic bubble he'd placed around the shuttle from collapsing under the strain. Without it they would lose their oxygen supply. He prayed it would also withstand the collision with the earth.

Slowly yet deliberately he tried expanding it a little at a time – maybe he could slow them down, just a little, maybe enough. He tried a little more. Then some more. He had a tiny amount of time to wonder if he'd actually survive the landing before the ground rose up to crush him.

~*~*~

Olivia Terry truly believed she was going to roast alive. The bulkhead behind her was going to rip open like a flaming tuna can and she was going to be the first human meteor. The blonde girl, Claire, was bouncing around enough that she thought she might hurt someone else, so she reached out a hand to her. Grasping each others' wrists, Olivia pulled the girl to her feet and shoved her into the seat across from her. A bloody cut on Claire's brow quickly began to disappear while she strapped herself in and raised her eyes to present her with an expression of deep gratitude.

The force pressing her into her seat increased in intensity along with the heat, and the roar took on a quality that was more like a screaming whistle - like a bomb dropping out of the sky. And just like that, they stopped. There was a final tremor and the sound of rocks and dirt detonating all around them and then everything was quiet. It wasn't quite the crash landing she had expected. From the way they all hung in their seats it was obvious the craft was balanced precariously, if not wholly unbelievably, on its nose. Astounded they were all still conscious, Olivia looked at the others – no one was brave enough to move. They all turned to look at the cockpit hatch when they heard a soft, weak moan come from the other side.

With a jolt, the weight of the shuttle proved too much – whatever power held it in its position broke and let go, and it crashed down around the nose before falling to its side with a resounding _bang_. Olivia prayed that whoever made that moan hadn't been underneath…

She watched as Claire maniacally laughed off her adrenaline, rubbing her face with her fists, then looked up to face the other two.

"Anyone wanna take any bets that son of a bitch _still _ain't dead?"

"That would be too much to hope for," said the man she knew to be her father, as he unbuckled his straps and made his way to force the rear hatch open, ready for fresh air. Olivia followed suit, and she noticed Hiro also grappling with his buckle, eager to kiss the ground.

She squinted in the sun as they stepped out, dust mingled with steam or smoke or both and metal shrapnel gleaming in the harsh sunlight. She swayed a little uneasy on her feet before she became accustomed to solid ground. Over her shoulder, behind her, she could hear Claire and her dad exchanging words, too preoccupied to notice they were standing in the middle of a rather large, perfectly circular crater in the middle of what appeared to be the Texas panhandle.

And, at least for the moment, they were alone.

"Where is other shuttle?" Hiro whispered.

Olivia recalled some information she gleaned from the onboard computer while she had traversed it's controls in order to start the shuttle's ignition. A set of coordinates.

"I think I know."

~*~*~

Shortly after they left the space station, the man at the helm left the cockpit, sealed it up behind him, then took a seat in the passenger section, strapping himself in. He introduced himself to Molly, Matt, and Peter as Craig Dalton, and introduced the blonde girl as Lindsay Jacobsen. This did nothing to change the way Matt stared at him, as if he were completely ape-shit bonkers. Or a purple alien with tentacles. Something like that.

"Pleasure to meet you, Craig, wish the circumstances were different. So, this thing is gonna land _itself_ then?"

"Ah, well, actually… yes. I tried to locate manual controls for steering but it has none. Coordinates have been programmed into it – it can't go anywhere else."

"Ten bucks says we're being hand delivered to their home base with a great big bow on top," muttered Lindsay as she dropped her face to her hands. "Dammit… we're _still_ trapped."

"All we have to do is keep them from collaring us," Mohinder stated.

"Or gassing us first," Matt replied. "Wait – that cockpit seals, doesn't it."

"Yes."

"Mo, do you think you can break that glass? Are you strong enough?"

"It's worth a shot. What are you thinking?"

"I have an idea."

~*~*~

Matt felt power switch to the magnets shortly before the craft came to a stop, keeping it aloft roughly eighteen inches above the ground. Quickly he and the rest of his passengers left their seats, clasped hands with each other, and packed themselves like sardines into the cockpit, sealing the hatch behind them. He heard Lindsay take a few calming breaths before he watched her and everyone else, including himself, _disappear_. She had called it "camouflage". Unseen, they remained still and silent as they waited.

He felt Molly squeeze his hand when they heard a torrent of footsteps approach the shuttle – they watched through the viewport as they drew up in a circle outside, readying their weapons and taking aim. Next was the sound of the rear hatch opening as something was tossed inside the passenger section – he heard it bang and bounce to its final resting spot. He also heard the same familiar debilitating whine as before, on that long open stretch of highway in California, but the seal of the hatch mitigated most of its effect. People began to board the craft, looking for its inhabitants. Their time was up, he sent a telepathic message to Mohinder.

"_NOW_."

Mohinder grunted as he pulled back his arm, clenched his fist, and let loose with the ability he'd worked so hard to give himself. The glass exploded outward in a massive spraying arc. Everything seemed to move in slow motion. Several of the black-suits ducked for cover, forgetting their weapons. For a few moments the group was visible again as they jumped and landed just beneath the nose of the shuttle. They made no move to run, only pulled more tightly together as Matt brought his hands to his temples and hunched over in full concentration, eyes closed. The nearest black-suits recovered and, with lightning reflexes, had their firearms trained back on their targets just as they disappeared before their very eyes. A hush fell over the scene. Matt began weaving his companions through the crowd, single file, as quietly and deftly as possible while still maintaining the illusion that they simply weren't there.

"Spooky to be so close," Lindsay breathed to herself, "like a slow dance with the enemy…"

Reaching the edge of the landing pad, they watched the crowd behind them mill about in obvious confusion and defeat. Individuals in white lab coats arrived shouting orders and organizing squads. Peter took the opportunity to whisper to Matt.

"If we can get someplace with better cover I can fly us out of here a couple at a time."

Matt's attention was still ensnared by his ability, but he did allow himself to nod his assent. All along he had been counting on Peter to do exactly that.

They rounded a corner behind a large structure that could've served as a hangar building. Matt maintained their appearance while Peter wondered aloud, "Any idea where we are?"

"I know exactly where we are," answered Craig. "We're right outside where it all started – Yuma, Arizona."

"I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing," Peter replied as he linked arms with Molly and Lindsay. "Ladies, whatever you do, _don't_ scream – I _won't_ drop you." With that and a sharp puff of air the three of them launched off the ground.

From high in the air Peter could see the nearby city. They conspicuously touched down in a rear alleyway behind a diner on the edge of town.

"Sit tight – I'll be back soon with the others."

After he left, Lindsay turned to Molly and told her, "if we see anything suspicious, I'll just camouflage us." Feeling a bit braver, they entered the diner. They perched at a booth near the back of the restaurant and, after Molly had borrowed an ink pen from their waitress, she started drawing markings on a napkin. Curious, Lindsay moved in for a closer look.

"I'm looking for the other shuttle," Molly explained. "It's my ability. I'm gonna focus on Hiro." Once she had drawn a makeshift map of the United States, she closed her eyes and used the pen as a dousing rod. The point touched down –

"Oh my God he's practically on top of us!"

She looked up as the rest of their companions joined them.

"Matt! Hiro's not far from here – that must mean the other shuttle's nearby!"

"I don't know where it could be," Peter replied, rubbing the back of his neck. "I certainly didn't see anything like it from the air, not for _miles_…"

"He could've teleported here to look for us," Matt said. "But how would he know to come _here_ to look? You sure about that Molly?"

"Yes!"

"They have Olivia with them," Craig interjected, slightly out of breath. He had made a run for it while Peter flew the last two. "When she fused herself with the console to start the shuttles' ignition she must've seen the coordinates. It's the only thing I can think of."

"If that's true and they have the coordinates, they're gonna teleport straight into an ambush… Peter, you and me, we have to go back and get them out of there. Everyone stay put. If we're not back in ten minutes get the hell out of town. Molly, go with Mo."

She burst from the booth to wrap her arms around Matt's neck before he left.

"I love you!"

"I love you too, honey."

~*~*~

Hiro had no idea how to teleport to exact coordinates. He had told her as much when they'd talked about what else he could do with his ability, other than just freezing time. Ghost-girl, who called herself Olivia, had told him to "think of Yuma, Arizona." He had absolutely no idea what a "Yuma, Arizona" even looked like. If he'd had his cell phone he could've pulled up Google Maps or GPS or something, but sadly that was one of the items he'd had removed from his person upon his kidnapping, and the likelihood that it was ringing off the hook somewhere in space was incredibly high. And incredibly funny, really.

"Dig in your pockets – we're looking for quarters," Olivia insisted as she plunged her hands into her own pockets. Hiro shrugged and indulged her, pulling out a handful of change, a mish-mash of different currencies (what could he say, he traveled a lot – he had bus fare for several countries). He did manage to locate a couple quarters.

"YES!" Olivia cried as she plucked one of the coins out of his palm, holding it up to capture the light. When she turned it to its tail side, he noticed it was an Arizona state quarter. She yanked one of her own hairs out of her head and held its tip between her index finger and thumb, intending to use it as a tiny stylus. She pointed to a particular spot on the little "map" of Arizona and said, "That's Yuma – that's where we need to go."

What she failed to realize was that there wasn't going to be a "_we_". He gave her a cheeky grin, wiggled his fingers goodbye, then popped out of existence, leaving her mouth agape with indignance.

He rematerialized between two large dumpsters stashed behind a convenience store facing a busy interstate. He considered the term for the establishment to be extremely appropriate as it just so happened to be very conveniently placed. He dashed inside to find a map of Arizona. Finding the confluence point of the coordinates Olivia had provided, he determined the last leg of his journey. Returning to the rear of the store, he teleported away…

And arrived smack dab in the middle of the other shuttle engulfed in a cloud of green gas. He gagged and spluttered and felt himself growing faint when he heard someone whisper, "SHHHH! Calm down, don't draw attention – come this way!"

He followed the sound of the voice to a hatch that opened revealing Matt and Peter on the other side. He barely had time to inhale a gulp of fresh air before Peter had him by the arm, yanking him into the air saying, "Off we go!!!"

~*~*~

Claire sat very still where she was near the nose of the shuttle, a warm breeze tossing errant strands of her golden hair around her shoulders, tickling her. She heard a growing number of voices cheering behind her. Hiro had found them. They were free. Her dad left her side, where he'd stood leaning against the hull, to regroup with the others, carrying the appearance of someone who was prepared to take charge and start making plans for their next move. He gave her a little pat. She knew he really meant to distract them from discovering what lay before her.

She couldn't recognize him. Sylar. He wasn't much more than a twisted, broken, bleeding skeleton sparsely covered with cracked, blackened red tissue. Even when Ted had broken into her home in Odessa and unleashed a nuclear holocaust - which naturally she survived - she didn't look this bad. However, it had been close and she could relate.

He was exhausted and his ability to heal had grown sluggish. His incinerated throat made a harsh screeching wheeze with every rapid, stuttered breath. She knew if he could he'd still be screaming. His entire body writhed agonizingly in the dirt. One of his eyes had re-created itself and was staring, unblinking, at her. He reached out an arm to her, one she saw was badly fractured, and it shook with the effort until he lost the strength to hold it up, letting it fall back to the ground where it clawed for her. He was begging.

There was a part of her that took pity on him. That part wanted to stay with him, like a mentor, explain to him how this ability - the one they now shared - worked, and watch it heal him. Perhaps it was some kind of weird latent nurturing instinct, part of what made her female. But then a larger part of her knew she'd never see Meredith, her real mother, ever again. Never get the chance to truly know her. Never see Nathan Petrelli. Or Angela. And if this squirming, wheezing, bloody bag of bones had anything to say about it she'd never see her foster father, the man who raised her, alive again either. She knew there were countless other families missing loved ones because of this man. She also knew there'd be more. Like Matt Parkman's family.

Her jaw set in a grim line, she grasped the arm he'd extended to her and with a _snap_ set the broken bones back in place. He ripped his arm away from her, lifted a knee toward his chest, and choked violently. The leg he didn't lift, she noticed, had a broken femur and a jagged piece of shin bone protruding through the flesh. As she reached for it he pathetically tried to push her away. She blocked his attempt and smashed down on the shin bone, putting it back where it belonged. He threw his head back as his fingers raked deep grooves into the dry soil, and be began to find his voice.

"Look at me," she commanded him tersely. "_Look at me_! You _need_ to trust me on this. If you don't set the breaks they'll just heal back like that. You'll have to break them again later."

She braced his thigh against her knee and met his eye fiercely. He drew a couple ragged breaths then nodded, signaling he was ready. She pushed and heard it _crack_. He arched his back and this time was able to emit a tremendous wailing sob.

She was about to set his left collarbone when she heard the distinct sound of motors. She pivoted on her knee to look behind her. She felt Sylar's thin hand grip her thigh, pleading with her to stay.

"Fun time's over, Claire-bear, gotta go," her dad hollered to her. On the horizon a cloud of dust chased a gang of white Jeeps like a wake – Jeeps that looked for all intents and purposes too much like fleet vehicles to be ignored. That combined with the fact that they were outfitted with large artillery and were racing toward them at a blinding rate of speed was enough to suggest they weren't there to rescue anyone. Those Jeeps were meant for _chasing_.

In order to keep them at a distance, Peter raised a telekinetic wall that two of the five vehicles crashed into, smashing into pieces. Lindsay camouflaged the bystanders while Matt addled the wits of one of the other drivers, telling him to flip his own vehicle. It cartwheeled away, disintegrating into a pile of debris. The remaining two Jeeps accelerated, drawing nearer. Olivia dispersed and streaked into the nearer of the two, disabling componentry and frying its computer leaving it dead where it stood – none of its passengers were able to catch her, though they leapt out of the vehicle making every attempt. No one was surprised to see they wore black suits. The last vehicle skidded to a stop before them, spraying gravel, and several of the blinking, screeching, gas-emitting devices were flung from within it to be immediately fried by the lightning emanating from Peter's fingertips. They never stood a chance. A very angry Mohinder stalked up to the driver side door and ripped it from its hinges. He drew the driver out by his throat and held him high in the air, then took his gun and tossed it to Noah. He gave the man a good shake.

"You want to put a collar on me now??? _Go ahead!_"

A passenger emerged ready to fire at Mohinder but wasn't as fast as Noah. The remaining passengers were ordered out of the vehicle by gunpoint. Craig and Peter worked together to round up the stragglers on foot, after which Hiro teleported the lot of them to an undisclosed destination – probably Yuma.

"Olivia, do you think you can fix what you did to that Jeep?" Noah asked.

"Fix it, no, but if you're asking _can I make it_ _run_ the answer is yes."

Noah peered off into the distance with his hand shading his eyes. Following his line of sight they could see round two coming – another line of Jeeps like an angry swarm of hornets.

Claire dislodged Sylar's hand and walked up behind her dad, hands on her hips. "Where are you thinking of going?"

"Actually, I was thinking of visiting your mom. I don't think we're really that far."

She didn't exactly think it was a good plan, dragging their trouble to her mom's front door and all, but she didn't have any better ideas. All of their identities had been erased, it wasn't like they could just go _anywhere_. She knew this wasn't the first time she or her dad had gotten Sandra Bennett in the middle of a bunch shit, anyway. She was a strong woman – experienced, probably the safest haven they had. And she made _really_ good lemonade.

The others wasted no time commandeering the remaining two Jeeps. Claire knew she needed to join them but couldn't make herself move. She turned once again to her old adversary. He had his arms pressed against his face and he was panting. She felt her father's approach; he placed a hand on her shoulder.

"What about him?" she asked.

"Claire, you know what will happen if we help him." He gripped her a bit harder and turned her to face him. "Nothing good will come from walking that path. I've come to regret a lot of decisions in my life – please let me spare you from this one. He made his choice long ago to put himself at odds with his own kind." He cupped her face in his hands – hands that still felt as large and warm as they did when she was little. "Do you really think that showing him your mercy will change what he is? _Don't look back_. We're out of time. Let's go."

Obeying, she followed him and climbed into one of the Jeeps. Beside her Matt sat quietly with a deeply furrowed brow, testing the limits of his skill trying to keep them from being seen as they made their escape. As the vehicle jerked into action, kicking up gravel and dirt and tossing her head with the force, a thought crept over her and made its presence known rather insistently. She was not Noah Bennett nor did she want to be, not with the amount of crap he still had to answer for. She burned with defiance.

She looked back.

Through the settling dust she could see the second wave of Jeeps converge on the dilapidated shuttle like sharks in a feeding frenzy. A tense knot of black-suits burst forth and gathered under its nose. As one they circled and drew their firearms to a central point on the ground. They had him.

She clenched her fists. She should feel vindicated. She should feel _relieved_. He was gone! He would never hurt anyone else ever again! Loathe as she was to admit it, one thing her dad said was right – she would not be able to change him, make him be something he wasn't. Leaving him there saved lives. So why did she feel so hollow?

Because she wasn't Noah Bennett and she wasn't Sylar. Because she wasn't cold and ruthless and self-serving. Because she knew she'd fed a helpless man to a fate worse than death.

With stunning clarity, she recognized what she was feeling – remorse. She allowed her eyes to cloud over with tears for her enemy.

_She_ was the one who felt like the monster.


	6. The Lesser of Two Evils

**A/N: With regards to the last chapter, I screwed up on the quarter – let's pretend Hiro's gas station was on a busy interstate near the grand canyon since that's what's *actually* printed on the back of the Arizona state quarter. Shame on me for not doing my homework. Also, I don't own WoW although I've sure paid them a lot of money over the past, I dunno, five years? Has it been five years? Christ almighty… And, finally, I don't own Wolverine but if I did I'd wash him more often.**

**Edited to say (because I always forget something and end up posting my chapters twice, it's kindofa routine now): Zomg to all you folks who have reviewed - I LOVE YOU - and you know who you are! Great big wet sloppy kisses for you MWAH MWAH!!! **

**I don't own Heroes or anything remotely related and I bow humbly before the television gods, please have mercy on me. Rated "M" for language, some violence, some blood & guts, and eventually some sexual imagery. And please review! If I've massively screwed something up, I'd like to know =D**

**6) The Lesser of Two Evils**

It was so dark she had no idea where she was, and the ground she walked on was soft and shifting, causing her to stumble a little – she thought it might've been sand. Definitely sand – she heard the wet whisper of waves somewhere, not far. Although it was warm and humid, the sea breeze held a slightly damp nighttime chill. She hugged her shoulders and stopped walking. It was so quiet and peaceful here. Tilting her face to the air she indulged a deep sigh and sat, just for a moment, noticing for the first time the melancholy sliver of a lonely crescent moon hanging low in the sky, reflecting its mystical glow off of the water.

Her reverie was gradually broken by a creeping sense of foreboding. She was not alone. She stood and squinted through the darkness along the line of the beach where a figure materialized before her like a ghost. She staggered backwards a couple steps when she realized the figure was black – totally black from head to toe, blacker than the night. She tensed for flight, panicked at the thought of another collar clamped around her neck. Before she could run, her visitor raised his arm and her body stiffened, completely immobile. She knew who he was now, this was no stranger. She wanted to scream - could almost feel the searing, white hot tearing of the flesh on her forehead, boring through her skull. What she felt instead, however, was gentle pressure, like a finger, softly caress her cheek and the line underneath her bottom lip.

She twisted her head, trying to look away, when he suddenly caught fire, the blaze shocking her retinas. When her eyes had adjusted she bravely spared a glance. He was closer now – she could feel the heat baking her skin – and she could see his eyes. They were wide with horror. Pleading. The flames collapsed to glowing red embers and slowly he came apart, crumbling and blowing away, arm still outstretched. When the last smoldering pieces of him twirled away into the sky she regained the use of her faculties and she buckled to her knees, face in her hands, sobbing.

The last thing she heard was a breath in her ear, perhaps nothing more than the wind playing tricks on her mind.

"I love you."

Claire gasped awake, fingers tightly wrapped in her pillow, hair strewn uncomfortably across her face. There were voices outside her bedroom window on the front porch.

"I love you too."

It was her mother. Shifting around, she pulled back the gauzy curtain to take a peek. Her parents lightly rocked in the front porch swing, dark silhouettes in a hushed embrace. Noah took Sandra's face into his hands and kissed her in a way that made Claire feel warm with something she couldn't identify. She pressed her forehead against the window, unable to contain the smile that had spread to her face….until she realized she was witnessing her parents make out. Suddenly she was ready to be _anywhere_ else. Careful not to wake Molly sharing the other half of her bed, she crawled out from beneath her bedding and padded barefoot through her bedroom door and down the stairs.

Eyes adjusting to the darkness, and still shaking off her dream, she squealed when she bumped into a warm body in the kitchen.

"Oh, I'm so sorry," she heard a male voice. She recovered, crossed to the refrigerator and opened it to see Craig bathed in its light, standing with his hands up at the end of the counter. "Didn't mean to startle you."

"You can't sleep either, eh?" she asked, reaching for the milk.

"Oh, no… no. Well, yes and no. I don't sleep. Well, I, uh, I _do_, but for only about 7 nights a year."

"Seriously?" She poured herself a glass and offered him some.

"Yeah," he replied, accepting her offer.

"That's a lot of spare time." She pulled up a chair at the kitchen table where he joined her.

"Yeah, I fill it though. Do a lot of reading, some night school, other projects."

"That must be why Olivia said you knew _everything_." His only response was soft, humble laughter. He had a stunning smile, a brilliant flash under dark hair and dramatic eyes. "So," she continued, "I understand Lindsay's camouflage thing, but I don't get Olivia's power at all."

"Ah, yeah, she's an odd duck. She has total control over her own matter. She can disperse it, walk through walls and what not, travel along electrical currents. But she can also convert her particles to waves or signals – she can be transmitted. We call her the Ghost in the Machine."

Claire chuckled. "You have names, eh?"

"Oh sure, why not? It's just for fun. Lindsay's the Chameleon."

"Couldn't have guessed. So who're you? The Speeding Know-It-All? Oh no no, I got it – the Lightning Librarian!"

"Heh heh, no. No, I'm just Craig." He gave her another dose of his handsome smile and patient humor, but it still wasn't quite enough to erase her dream's lingering haunt. He happened to be somewhat perceptive to the matter.

"So what's keeping you up?"

She sighed, staring bubbles into her milk. After a pause, she said, "We left someone back there."

"Sylar. I've heard of him." He really did know everything. Of course, being a student of Mohinder Suresh, Claire supposed his familiarity with the man shouldn't have come as a surprise.

"Don't get me wrong. The guy is _NOT_ a great guy. He's killed a lot of people, some of them were people I loved very much. Give him the chance, he'd try to kill you too. And he's sick enough to try to justify what he does." She forced a harsh laugh. "Killers who don't feel remorse aren't exactly the kind of people you want just waltzing around free out there… Leaving him behind probably saved lives."

"But?"

"But… It still feels wrong."

He turned, angling his body to face her, making him seem more open to her without making her uncomfortable. He cocked his head sideways a bit.

"Leaving him there made us no better than him."

_Knows. Everything. _

"Exactly. There's more to it than that, too. I'm not so sure it's such a fabulous idea that he's left in the hands of those '_shadow people_'. You saw what they did to him – they really wanted him for something. I mean, they wanted _all_ of us, sure, but it really seemed like he was critical to their success. Like Mohinder said, they needed to understand his ability so they could use it to understand ours. I can't help but think that if they're successful at whatever they're up to, it'd spell doom for the rest of us, you know?"

"Yeah…"

"I mean, these _people_, they flippin' _erased_ us!"

"Kinda hard to prove someone was kidnapped who never existed in the first place."

"Right. Exactly. They went through a lot of trouble to do that, which tells me they had absolutely no intention of ever letting us go. They were going to _use us up_. I'm telling you right now, I think these guys are capable of hurting a lot of people, a lot more than Sylar alone, if they get their way. I mean, they have a freakin' _space station_. Nothing says, '_umm we're working on something super bad_' like '_so, let's work on it in space_,' right? If they start mass-producing what they're working on - if it gets into the hands of _more_ rich crazy people…. military…. terrorists… you name it… I guess….. wow, I can't believe I'm gonna say this." She rested her head on her hand, suddenly feeling a bit more fatigued, or maybe overwhelmed. "I guess… I think it might be worth it to save a serial killer if it means we'll save the world."

~*~*~

Micah had been in some strange situations before, but this one was _way_ up there. First was the phone call from Noah Bennett, in the middle of the night no less (not that he was asleep or anything, it _was_ finals week for pete's sake), telling him he was putting him on a plane first thing in the morning to Midland, TX. Then there was the car ride from the airport with Claire's _mom_, and she droned on and on about how, ever since Lyle'd gone off to college, the house had been so empty and now she just didn't know how to deal with all these people. And then there was the plane ride itself. Micah wasn't a big fan of flying – particularly, wasn't a big fan of airports. His activities as REBEL made him somewhat of a suspicious character, and the fact that he was on the FBI's most wanted list for criminal technological espionage didn't make the pre-flight security check that much more fun either. But when Noah Bennett pulled strings, he pulled _all_ of them so the flight went without a hitch.

He arrived in time for a late breakfast. The instant he walked through the front door he was assaulted by the barrage of way too many voices in the confined space and the smell of pancakes and sausage. The sight of familiar faces put him more at ease and he graciously accepted the invitation to join the huge buffet. He chatted and hugged and talked about school and his family in New Orleans and was introduced to new people. The way that Noah had nothing short of demanded his presence, however, still weighed heavily in the back of his mind – there was something wrong here, something he suspected he was going to be asked to fix.

At a point where there became a lull in the conversation, Peter Petrelli looked up from his coffee and said to him, "So. Have you ever seen so many people who didn't exist before?"

While he received his long explanation, Micah's attention was divided as he searched for a place to plug in the laptop he guessed he was going to be using rather heavily…

~*~*~

"Oh come _on_," Claire complained. "Just four little 'A''s, that's all I'm asking for."

"That would be cheating, Claire," Micah drolled, focused on his job.

"Ughhhh, but it's my _next-to-last_ semester!" She flopped unceremoniously on the couch. "What does it matter? When you get to _your_ next-to-last semester, you ask yourself if _you_ care if it's cheating…."

"What I _care_ about is that after I leave here, with all the government databases I've hacked, your mom is gonna have a lot of suits sniffing her network for this mac address. I'd like to keep the illegal activities to a minimum. She's a nice lady. I'm just gonna put all your identities back where they were and be on my merry way." With this he turned to look at her. "And actually _take_ my own final exams." He earned a big-sisterly sneer.

Checking to be sure they were alone, Claire left the couch to sit by him, shouldering up to him conspiratorially.

"Micah, before you go back….there's one more thing I need your help with. We… those of us who made it out… we weren't the only ones that -"

"Spit it out, Claire."

"We left someone behind. We left _Sylar_ behind." This stopped him in his tracks. He glared up at her.

"Why would you do that?" Why would _anyone_ to that to someone? His glare softened, however, as he studied her face. What he saw reflected there was the death of two parents and fear for the lives of others. He could _certainly_ relate to _that, _having been orphaned himself. He sighed and turned his eyes to his keyboard, placing his hands in his lap.

"Forget I asked, I know why you would do that. It's just… He saved me once. And didn't even kill me for it. Years ago. I saw something in him that I don't think anyone else has ever seen." He returned his eyes to her. "I saw a victim, like my mom. He has a _split personality_, Claire. I wonder if he's had it all along. I wonder if that's all Sylar even is. I wonder if he can be treated, he could stop… and just be…. I don't know."

"I don't really care what he could or couldn't be. He could wake up every morning getting hit by a _bus_ for all I care. Hell, that'd actually be really great even. But it doesn't change the fact that he's currently their greatest weapon against us. The longer they keep him, the bigger the threat they become." She paused, bringing her thoughts together. "Here's the deal – I haven't said anything to Dad or Matt or Peter. They won't think it's a good idea and they _will_ stop us. But I've gotta go back and I need help."

"Go where? Claire, we don't even know where he's being held. And even if we did, it's just the two of us…"

"Mohinder's students want to come. They're geeky smart people. They think that, if we can confiscate some of their technology, they can reverse engineer it, maybe find a way we can defend ourselves better in the future. Personally, I'd just like to blow the whole dang place up."

"Okay, _what_ place? You haven't answered that one. Where are we going?"

"Relax. _Molly_ knows. What we really need are tickets to Oklahoma City. Can you do that?"

"Can I do that….. pffffffff….."

"Does that mean you'll help us?"

"You want me to come with you, don't you."

Claire only grinned.

"I'll come on one condition – I _can't_ miss any exams. I gotta be home by Tuesday."

"Deal."

~*~*~

"Here, try this on," Claire ordered Olivia as they were ransacking Sandra's closet. The owner of said wardrobe was currently out of the house with her husband taking Peter and Mohinder to the airport. Claire felt for sure Peter knew something was up, but he said nothing as he hugged his goodbyes. They had a very narrow window of opportunity to get out of the house and down the road to catch their own flights while the Bennetts were simultaneously en route back home. The matter remained that they needed to be able to carry their own artillery… which meant that… well, it _meant_ that they needed to be able to smuggle weapons onto an _airplane_. Naturally, this presented them with quite a problem – one they hoped to mitigate by stuffing several handguns and tons of ammo into pockets Olivia created within her own body. Because this added to her mass (and gave her a slightly lumpy appearance which she didn't appreciate _at all_) they were currently sailing through Sandra's clothes hoping to land on something that would provide her adequate cover, but didn't make her feel… old. Or fat. Or "blanchy", whatever that meant.

Having settled on a pair of overalls and an old long-sleeved t-shirt (one they were pretty sure Sandra wore when she was pregnant with Lyle), they decided that Olivia's cover story, when she set off every dang metal detector in the joint like a rave party on crack, would be that she had metal rods placed in her body due to birth defects in her bone structure. Molly sat behind them on the bed, paying no attention to the conversation, while she marked up a route on a road atlas that led them to a particular set of coordinates. When she finished, she stood and tucked the map into Claire's open backpack, then turned with hands on hips to study Olivia practicing a somewhat disjointed and realistic gait for someone with supposed skeletal issues. She made a sympathetic face.

"You look really uncomfortable."

"Good!" Claire expressed. "That means we're doing something right!"

Olivia wanted to snap, but the pity on Molly's face was plain and real so she graciously clamped down on her temper.

"Are we ready to get this party started soon or something? I still don't know why we don't have Hiro teleport us."

"His powers make him sick, he's not feeling well and I don't want to put him into further danger."

"I put the map in Claire's backpack just now," Molly stepped in. "I marked three different routes in case you get into some kind of trouble and need to change direction. I don't suppose I could still talk you out of this… it just seems like such a huge bad idea… Claire, this guy killed my whole family, killed your real parents, won't stop killing _ever_. I know you think he's the lesser of two evils, but…"

"Molly, I know you don't feel right about this, which is why I can't appreciate your help enough." Claire moved to place her hands on the girl's shoulders. "I promise _you_," she gave them a squeeze, "that I will spend the rest of my life keeping an eye on the bastard. And trust me, I've got a lot of time ahead of me."

While Molly still remained unconvinced, a grudging part of her knew that Claire's reasoning was sound. The shadow people had to be stopped, if it wasn't already too late. She put her arms around Claire's shoulders and drew her in.

"Be careful," she breathed.

Claire pulled away and cupped Molly's face in her warm hands, beaming a wiley smile to her.

"What else can I be? I'd like to see them hurt _me_."

The three girls made their way downstairs where Matt was unconscious, mouth open and drooling, face pressed against the kitchen table, a telephone still in his hand. He had been talking to Janice. Molly went to the stove, having procured a mug and a teabag from the adjacent cabinets, and poured herself some hot water from the kettle. After splashing her teabag in the water for a couple seconds, watching the tannins and flavors swirl and color the water, she blew away some steam and took her first sip, commenting on how she could barely taste the sleeping pills they'd crushed into the kettle. The other two followed her into the living room where she sat on the couch next to the heavily sleeping form of Hiro. They were then joined by Craig, Micah, and Lindsay.

She took another drink and said, "Guys, good night and good luck. Be safe."

Micah moved to her and hugged her, then Claire leaned in to kiss her forehead before whispering, "Thanks for taking this one for the team. I meant what I said earlier." Molly knew she did. She settled into the cushions, laying her head on her hands on the soft armrest, and waited for the drug to take its effect, clearing her of any implication that she might be involved in this hair-brained scheme. She smiled and watched the five vigilantes walk out the front door. The last thing she remembered was the sound of a Jeep in the driveway roaring to life, then the crunch of gravel under tires as it sped away.

~*~*~

Despite Claire's initial panic, Micah assured her he'd placed himself on a different flight for a damned good reason. First of all, the last thing he wanted to see added to his Interpol file was "caught smuggling firearms onto an airplane." Second of all, it allowed him to take up his current position as some punk college kid, taking advantage of the free wi-fi, hanging out playing World of Warcraft while waiting for his flight. While putting off the very convincing appearance he was merely grinding levels on his Death Knight, he was able to spend his time uninterrupted talking to the router, examining traffic on ports, trying to determine which connection existed between the x-ray machine and the terminal that printed its output to a screen. From there, his mind surfing the network on the link his laptop provided him, translating the simple and elegant language of "1"s and "0"s, he was able to pry into the buffer cache of the terminal's memory pulling up images of several people who had previously been scanned. One of them was sure to provide Olivia a perfect cover in the _definite_ eventuality that she'd be considered highly suspicious, and be forced to subject to a scan herself. He found one of whom he thought for sure had to be either a war veteran or an extremely accident prone freestyle mountain biker – this person had more metal holding him together than Wolverine.

As he'd suspected, the girl had been singled out, her body having created quite a raucous and her story not quite believable. He nearly laughed as he watched the other two girls press against Craig in obvious attempts to keep from becoming conspicuous, their fight-or-flight instincts raging in fevered waves just beneath the skin, barely contained. When Olivia had entered the machine, he slipped the terminal the image just like a black-jack dealer slid a card across sultry green Las Vegas velvet. The operator of the terminal merely shook her head as if to say, "_damn_, poor girl," and moved her right on through.

Once he'd seen them board the plane – still glancing around nervously, eyes wide with shock – he logged off of WoW, packed up his gear, whistled a little tune, and headed toward his own gate.

~*~*~

Claire was happy to let Craig drive the rental van Micah had secured for them while she sat in the passenger seat consulting the map. Knowing her parents were home by now witnessing the scene they'd left behind, she was never so glad in her _life_ that she no longer possessed a cell phone. She wasn't a teenager anymore and the last thing she wanted at her age was another lecture. Although she would've liked to have been a fly on _that_ wall, seeing her dad's face when he discovered the three drugged, snoring bodies… she nearly giggled at the thought. In some small way she thought he might actually be a teensy bit proud of her ingenuity. She could just see him, shaking his head where it lay in his hands, muttering something like, "like father like daughter…"

"There he is," she heard Craig say, causing her to look up where she saw a smug Micah, tall and slender in his red windbreaker, duffle over his shoulder, grinning like he knew they'd all be so completely hosed without him. And… he was right. After tossing his bag in the back, he climbed in the van and got strapped in.

"Howdy strangers!"

"I suppose we have _you_ to thank for getting us out of that little fiasco back there," Olivia purred.

Employing an obscenely roguish charm Claire had never seen him use, he told her, "You can thank me later."

Falling victim to the sudden spike of hormones in the vehicle, she watched Craig turn the wheel, pulling them away from the sidewalk and on to their next destination, certainly appreciating the way the muscles in his arm moved from the effort. Her gaze traveled the line of his jaw, exposed while glancing over his shoulder at traffic, strong and lightly stubbled giving way to a soft, smooth throat. She mused momentarily on how he definitely fit the pattern that had become "her type": tall, dark, handsome, with interesting eyes. And so smart. She blushed and quickly turned away when she realized he'd noticed her watching him.

"Which way, navigator?" his smiling voice brought her back to reality. She rubbed her eyes a little before drawing her finger along one of the lines Molly had provided.

"We need to get on I-40, and take that to 183. Look for signs to Quartz Mountain State Park."

"A state park, that's bold," Lindsay muttered from the back. "They're keeping him locked up in a campground…?"

"The coordinates Molly marked are awful close, but I bet there's more to it than that."

A few hours, a couple bags of trail mix, and _way_ too many Scooby Gang jokes later they pulled the van to the side of the road. They could see a lake glittering blue off in the distance to the west, and to the east, across the highway, a small gravel road greeted them innocently – it was scarcely used, and appeared as nothing more than a non-descript driveway in the middle of nowhere. The silence in the van hung heavy with suspicion.

"You sure this is it?" Craig finally asked.

"Yup. We hang a left here, go half a mile, and we're there. Right on top of Molly's red 'X'."

"Ummm," Olivia hummed, "does anyone else feel a bit nervous about waltzing up to the Evil, Mysterious Den of Genetic Scientists in broad daylight?"

"It's really hard to camouflage moving targets," Lindsay said, "especially _large_ ones, but I can try to keep us hidden if we drive super slow."

"The chances are good they've already seen us," Claire replied, "they've probably got satellites spying on us right now. Lindsay, if you thought you could hide us while we walked, we could just leave the van here."

"That would probably make it easier, yeah."

"These'll make life a lot easier too," declared Olivia, accompanied by a litany of metallic _thuds_ colliding with the floorboard of the van. Spilling out of her pant legs was the arsenal they'd worked so hard to conceal. Fully armed and holding hands with Lindsay, they left the contingent safety of the van behind them.

After a painfully long, slow walk taken step by step, the gravel road narrowed to something that more closely resembled a foot path. Around the time they'd decided to give up and go back they came across a structure that reminded Claire of a concrete storm shelter. Also, in the middle of nowhere. Standing at the mouth of the thing, the wind of the plains whipping her invisible hair around her, she could tell by the mild electric buzz in her ears that they had arrived at the right place.

"Can you hear that? That buzzing? This place is live. This is it."

"If we could find where the electricity hooks up, I could probably get inside unnoticed and open the door."

"It's probably underground, right beneath our feet," Craig supplied.

"Well, let's just have us a little peek." Olivia let go of Micah's hand just before she dispersed into a cloud and sank into the ground. After three minutes that seemed like thirty, the door at the bottom of the concrete stairs hissed, clanked, then slowly swung open by itself. They crept inside the dimly lit tunnel where they were met by a grinning ghost girl, obviously very pleased with herself. She re-solidified and Micah hi-fived her.

"Keep sharp guys," Claire whispered, "it won't be long before someone notices an unannounced open door on their grid."

"Lookie here, a panel!" Micah rang, almost mockingly. He had found a small console that controlled the locking mechanisms of the door. He set down his backpack, pulled out his laptop, then turned back to Olivia. "Do you think you can follow this line back to their main power grid? If you could transmit to my wireless receiver, I could use you as a connection to disable this whole damn place."

"I could give it a shot, yeah," and with that she dispersed once again and streamed into the panel. Claire took herself and her loaded 9mm a few paces down the tunnel, ready to fight fire with fire if need be. Lindsay and Craig joined her, but remained behind her, knowing she could survive shots they couldn't.

"Do you think they'll fire on us if they find us?" Lindsay asked.

"I suspect they'll try to do much worse than that. I don't intend to give them the opportunity."

Claire could feel the girl flinch behind her when they heard voices floating up from deep down the corridor. There hadn't been any earlier – they were drawing closer. She glanced over her shoulder at Micah, seated with his back to the wall, face bathed in the fluorescent gleam of his monitor's backlight. She wanted to ask about his progress but didn't want to take the chance that she'd interrupt him. She would hold their position if it came down to it and she would be a force to be reckoned with. Despite her differences, she was still a Bennett.

"Yes, I've got it!" Micah cried as the lights went out, plunging them into cavernous blackness. Claire heard Lindsay gasp, but not as loudly as the voices down the tunnel, eliciting strings of colorful language. A beam of light sliced through the dark, followed by another – flashlights. The voices were nearer.

"Quick, Micah, tell Olivia to stay put," Craig insisted, "Lindsay, camouflage us when they reach us."

They flattened their backs to the wall and waited. It wasn't long before they were approached by what looked like two floating heads accompanying bewitched flashlights. Closer inspection revealed that they were black-suits with their headpieces disabled. They were sent to check the door, and were spooked from the blackout.

"Do you think the two are related?" was all one of them had time to utter before Craig zipped out from his hiding spot and had them both completely incapacitated before the other could even draw a breath to reply. In a matter of moments they were disrobed and dragged out the door which was quickly shut behind them. Olivia manually locked the door before she withdrew herself from the panel. Much to the delight of the ladies, Craig started to strip.

"No one's gonna see me in one of these suits, not in this blackness. I'm gonna scout ahead."

He disappeared into the inky fabric and sped away. Claire picked up the other suit and handed it to Micah.

"Here, put this on. Craig's right, no one will see you in it. Olivia can walk through walls and Lindsay can camouflage me and her if need be. It's best served on you."

"Harpies, just wanna see another naked man," he grumbled unconvincingly. By the time he'd pulled the suit on Craig had returned.

"Well, there's good news, good news, bad news, and worse news. Good news is that it appears this place is nothing more than an old missile silo – it's not a huge place. Lots of people purchase them to make houses out of them. The better news is that with the power shut down most of the black suits are locked inside the rooms they were in when the grid came down. There's not a lot of traffic we need to fight."

"What's the bad news?"

"What we're looking for is gonna be _behind_ those locked doors, and… the few suits that _are_ still out in the halls are currently trying to follow me."

The second he shut his mouth they were serenaded by the sounds of shouting and running.

"Everyone behind me," Claire shouted. "Non-lethal shots only, shoot the legs or something."

"Claire," Micah said, sounding as if he'd discovered something, "they're carrying these." With that he brandished a weapon that had been attached to a belt she hadn't seen. "I think it's a tranq gun."

"I've got one too," Craig stated.

"Okay. Here's the plan. Olivia, Lindsay, hide. I'm gonna take their shots. Micah, you and Craig stay behind me, line 'em up in your sights. Tranq as many as you can. They get close enough to collar us, me and the girls are gonna start takin' out kneecaps. We _cannot_ let them get near us."

Claire held her breath and stood her ground when she heard an object banging loudly as it rolled into view. Red lights glittered in the darkness.

"Oh hell no," she growled as she fired three shots into it before it could start it's characteristic squeal. Immediately after the ringing in her ears dissipated, she could hear several firearms loading down the tunnel. She'd tipped her hand and showed them how armed she was. "Shit."

It felt like a stalemate. Craig had rested his tranq gun on her right shoulder, holding it steady, his body thrumming with energy kept in control by a gossamer thin leash. Micah had dropped to one knee behind her, his gun peeking around her left hip. The only thing she could hear was his breath, ragged with anticipation.

"Here we go," Craig whispered in her ear, his warm breath tickling the lobe, as the thunderous sound of running footsteps raced toward them. "Hope your serial killer is worth it."

~*~*~

He was startled into awareness by the sound of shots – two of them, and the lab coats were dispatched, tranquilized and unconscious on the floor where they stood. He had incredible trouble lifting his head and his vision was a smeared blur. He pulled against his restraints when he heard a small set of footsteps approach.

"_Look at me._"

He knew that voice. He turned to face the source of the command. His focus sharpened and he saw to his left veridian orbs haloed by tussled golden hair, her sweet pink lips parted in a fierce expression that lie in stark contrast to the cherubic qualities of her face. She hesitated before continuing, her gaze lingering over his swollen eye and the myriad cuts and bruises that adorned him. They'd been a bit rougher with him this time – apparently the mousey-headed Tierney had been well liked.

"So, how's this whole _'bein' special'_ thing working out for you?" she whispered in response to his injured state. He was well aware that he looked a lot better than the last time she'd seen him, the time when he'd saved her sorry butt… Angered and ashamed, he ducked away from her. Hot fingers yanked his chin to face her again. He sized her up with a menacing glare.

"You killed my mother, you killed my father. You brutalized me in a way that's never healed. You've terrorized me and my family for years. But you've never _lied_ to me. Would you ever _lie_ to me, Sylar?"

After a few composed breaths to calm his fury, he responded.

"No."

"You _don't_ lie. You _hate_ liars. Don't you."

"Yes," he ground out, jaw clenched.

"Good. I'm glad we have that understanding." She gave his cheek a firm pat, then drew nearer, eye to eye. He could feel her breath on his lips. "I'm banking on it. So, if I were to make you a deal – one I'm pretty damn sure you can't refuse - could I trust that, whatever you answer, you'd honor it?"

His anger drained completely and his breath hitched in his throat. Was she…. Did she just ask if she could _trust him_? Why would she do that? There was an annoyingly tight tug in his chest. He tried to ignore it and failed miserably.

"Yes," he whispered, not trusting his voice.

"Be sure, Sylar. I'm gonna be holding you to it an _awful long time_."

_Anything_. Anything if it meant she was here to save him. He dared to hope she was. He was desperate for fresh air, a shower, _clothing_… he was starving, dehydrated, aching, alone… He nodded his assent in his despondency.

She stepped around in front of him, drawing up close, placing her hands on either side of his face. His naked groin was painfully aware of her proximity. He stared holes into the wall ahead of him, nostrils flaring with the remainder of his dignity.

"I want you to _get over it_. I want you to leave Matt Parkman and his family alone. I want you to leave my dad and _his_ family alone. And if you're _still_ mad, I want you to pick on someone your own size," and with this she gave his head a shake, forcing his attention to snap back to her eyes, "you come pick on _ME_." She paused and dropped her hands, backing away a step. "In return… I will set you free."

She gave him a moment to process her words before asking, "do we have a deal?"

She had no idea what it felt like to be him. She had no idea what it was like to be lonely, unloved, unimportant, _sold_ because he was unwanted. She had never been a mindless slave to an ability that raged beyond her control. She had never been used, lied to, transformed or twisted, stripped naked to become an advantage for someone else's desires. Had she? She had never been a _monster_… right? He used to think they were so similar. Were they? How could she ask him to just _'get over it'_?

But he was tired. So tired he could ball up and sleep for three weeks. Too tired to stay angry. Too numb to stay hurt. He just wanted to go home. He hung his head as she walked away from him. When she returned she tenderly laid something over his arm – a lab coat she'd procured from the back of a nearby chair. His eyes swam a little from the unexpected kindness. He couldn't refuse her.

"Deal."

She returned to where she'd gotten the lab coat and picked up two items off of the desk. She approached him again and used the first one to unlock the restraint of his left hand. Before he could wriggle it out of its cage her hair billowed behind her, brushing its feathery softness across his arm, as she whipped around and ran to the door, dropping the second tool on the ground behind her. It was the device needed to unlock his collar. She stopped and looked at him one last time.

"Sylar, thirty minutes from now, after we're gone, if no one's left here alive………. I wouldn't hold it against you."

With that she was gone, but not before she saw the vicious, hungry smile that split his mouth.

~*~*~

When Claire caught up with her friends, they were loading a wide assortment of different items into backpacks, littered on the ground where they'd dispatched the last group of wandering black-suits. They were as pleased as treasure-hunters.

"We gotta go, _right now_," she stuttered, out of breath.

"I thought we were gonna blow the place up -"

Olivia was interrupted by the groans of wrenching, tearing metal and the blood-curdling screams of unsuspecting victims. Her jaw dropped, and she saw an unidentified lump of something smack against the wall behind Claire. It left a trail as it tumbled to the floor.

"I decided on a different plan, but we gotta move, _NOW_." She flung her backpack onto her shoulder and tore down the corridor toward the outer door, hoping the rest had the good sense to follow her. She gratefully heard their footsteps pounding at her heels.

Once they were outside, Micah panted as he ran, "You found him. You set him free."

"I did."

They piled into the van, stumbling over each other in their haste, throwing backpacks haphazardly, then sprayed a cloud of dust and gravel behind them as they whipped a u-turn in the middle of the road and got the hell out of Dodge.

In the back, Micah and the girls took out the artifacts they'd gathered, turning them over, postulating theories on their use, breathless with their recent exertion, vibrant with excitement. It was a job well done. Craig, for the most part, kept his eyes on the road, but occasionally spared a glance to Claire who was pensive and quiet, staring out the window at the tumbleweeds zipping past them. What was done was done and it had been difficult, but paled in comparison to what lay ahead.

What was she going to tell her dad?

**A/N #2: To make up for the screwup on the quarter, I did research YAY! The missile silo, she be a real place.**


	7. Tom and Jerry Part One

**A/N: So, wow... sorry for the delay, faithful readers! I had the chapter all planned out and it looked so simple.... and then it started getting humongous. Soooo instead of making everyone wait for an update that would take forever to read I decided to split it up and post "Part One". Yay! As always, thanks sooooo sooo much for the reviews, I love you all! Believe it or not, it's YOU that keeps this story going (outside of the story itself, right?) Now I really have to get crackin' because I need to get to the "Far Distant Future" part of this story before the new season starts (it's a goal)!!!  
**

**I don't own Heroes or anything remotely related and I bow humbly before the television gods, please have mercy on me. Rated "M" for language, some violence, some blood & guts, and eventually some sexual imagery. And please review! If I've massively screwed something up, I'd like to know =D**

**7) Tom and Jerry – Part One**

Claire hadn't moved a muscle in an hour. It was glorious. She had been up for nearly three days straight, cramming as much information into her brain as the space would allow, shoving aside reminders of the preceding events in Oklahoma. She had finished her last exam sometime around noon and she was still buzzing from the stress. Or maybe exhaustion. Or both. Or _maybe_ she was just procrastinating – the summer semester, her final semester, wouldn't start for another six weeks which meant she _should_ go home and she needed to pack. She needed to face her dad, who hadn't said anything to her about her actions – who'd instead given her an unnerving cold shoulder until it was time to kiss her goodbye at the airport. She was in trouble and she knew it, he was just biding his time until he could figure out exactly the right thing to do. Noah Bennett was _scary_ good at biding time and even better at his bland, almost pleasant poker face. And the way he'd sometimes smile like a wolf in sheep's clothing, like he knew something very important that she didn't… She couldn't make herself get off her bed.

Molly's last day of school was the day before. She picked up her new cell phone, which had conveniently been placed within arm's reach (how could one truly relax without adequately planning for such relaxation?) along with a glass of water and a bag of chex mix. She dialed the number, hoping not to reach any of the other Parkman clan. She nervously held her breath until the girl answered.

"Hey, Claire."

"Hey. Glad to be done?"

"Of course! You?"

"Well, you know. Not sure what to do with myself."

"I know the feeling. Hold on a sec, lemme get my map, and I'll tell you where he is today."

"Thanks."

Something in the girl had changed. She'd taken on a bit of fearlessness that Claire wasn't sure was entirely a good thing (lord knows she could use a little more fear herself, admittedly) but in the meantime it made keeping tabs on their quarry immensely less difficult. Maybe it was more of a sense of duty, to which Claire could certainly relate. After all, they'd released a monster back into the wild – it was their responsibility to monitor the situation. She heard the shuffling of laminated paper when Molly picked back up.

"Okay, let's see….."

Claire wanted to ask how she was doing, what her plans were for the summer, if there were any cute boys in her new neighborhood, anything that would make the phone call seem more normal, like she wasn't only calling to use her ability, but she didn't have the nerve to break the girl's concentration. She briefly wondered if Matt knew his little girl was keeping tabs on a psychopath. She guessed he probably did, being a mind reader and all. Maybe that meant he didn't entirely disagree –

"Hmmm…." Molly interrupted her train of thought, "well…. he's moved. He's left New York and gone to Boston."

Movement. That was the motivation Claire needed to employ a little movement of her own. She left her bed and retrieved her laptop. She plugged a thumb drive into it, one Micah had mailed her - on it was a list of names he'd gleaned from within the bunker where Sylar'd been held, and it bore a striking resemblance, while being much more comprehensive, to the paper list she'd found in her father's bloodied apartment. She imported the list to a spreadsheet and sorted by city.

"Boston, hmm... I've got three names here for Boston. That's a whole lot of ground to cover and not a lot of time. Molly, honey, I'm sorry but I gotta let you go - I need to call Craig. He's in Jersey, which for him is practically next door."

"Okie doke, be safe."

After a quick conversation with Craig, and another with Micah, she did have her bags packed and a plane to catch, but she wasn't going home. She was headed to Boston. When she'd freed Sylar she had placed herself in a custodian role, one that required she deny the boogeyman his desires and she wasn't about to give her father any reason to say "I told you so".

~*~*~

He had emerged from the missile silo with no more on his back than a bloody lab coat. The sun was setting and, while the promise of summer still hung humid in the balmy air, the temperature had grown a tad mild. He closed his eyes and sank to the ground, exhausted and vindicated, complacently allowing the wind to flick disheveled strands of hair across his face. The deal he'd struck with Claire Bennett nagged at him - he hated feeling as if he could be so easily manipulated, hated being manipulated _at all_, especially by young girls - but what was done was done, and the shunned yet insistent ethical part of him (the Gabriel part of him?) would force him to abide by it with fierce compulsion. He felt as if he were all dressed up and had nowhere to go. It had been so long since the last time he didn't have some sort of motive, some sort of plan. The part of the universe that used to revolve around him had stopped. He knew he should feel insignificant, he knew this should trouble him. He was surprised to discover that, instead, he was happy to just sit and breathe.

But he couldn't stay here, and he did need to have a plan. He had to get home.

Intuitive aptitude was not the only ability he had been born with. He was very good at reading people, and was unusually successful at turning on the charm when he needed it. He wondered if this empathy was something he'd inherited from his real mother… but _that_ was something he didn't prefer to think on long, because then he started trying to _remember_ things… what her name was, what she looked like, things that childhood trauma erased. These were parts of Gabriel he clamped down tightly. They were weaknesses, things that made him a victim, things that made him a victim of his _father_, things that made Sylar necessary. He hoped he wouldn't have to, but would use his empathy if necessary, counting on the kindness of strangers.

He decided his time was more productive spent sifting through the memories that had brought him here. He'd been transported in a vehicle, one that couldn't have gotten far without a driver. He rose as the sun dipped below the horizon, enterprising the remaining wan light to search the area. He reached out with his stolen perception, a preternatural sixth sense, hoping to locate hidden chambers underground. Just as the first star twinkled into existence he placed a key in the ignition of a Jeep he'd found tucked away in a garage whose entrance lie some five hundred paces to the south. Reaching the highway, he viewed the signs pointing to the state park campground with promise.

The family whose camp he'd breached, however, certainly didn't appreciate being ripped from the warmth and relative comfort of their tent and thrust into the crisp, late-spring Oklahoma nighttime air. As he held them aloft, nestled into the branches of a sparse stand of small oak trees, he worked quickly, sorting through luggage and other bags. The mother's frantic pleas were definitely drawing attention. Her husband had quickly started growling empty threats, but their young son, for all intents and purposes, actually seemed to be enjoying the brief feeling of weightlessness. Sylar smiled in spite of himself, almost proud in a way, when he thought he'd heard the kid whisper something about flying.

"Shut her up or I'll give her a nasty scar," he directed without looking up. "Your boy seems to be having somewhat of a good time, I'd really hate to spoil his fun." He gave the boy a little twirl and when he giggled, his parents quieted.

Locating some loose-fitting jeans, a black t-shirt, and some shoes, he dressed himself and ransacked the cooler. He made himself two enormous sandwiches then grabbed a banana, some marshmallows, and two bottles of water for the road. He removed the family of all their cash. He tossed the lab coat onto the remaining embers of the campfire where it smoked lazily before finally catching fire. He then pulled the boy to him and drew him into his arms - he appeared to be no more than five years old. His chubby face was still smiling - he had no idea what was going on, other than he'd been yanked out of bed in the middle of the night to become a human kite and it was awesome, _camping_ was officially awesome. Sylar fixed his parents with a level glare, dark eyes beneath dark brows hard with warning.

"Happy kid. Lucky kid. So loved, loves so much. He has no idea what the world is like. His love is sacred to you, isn't it. You'd never hurt him."

His mother reached her arms to him and vigorously shook her head, flinging her frightened tears. He didn't need special abilities to see the truth in her actions. His annoying empathy throbbed with her desperation - she'd let herself be sliced to bits if it meant she could save her son. Sylar was.... jealous? He pushed it away, focused.

"Lucky kid. You're good people," he was loathe to admit. "It would be wise, for his sake, if you did _not_ follow me. Some clothes and food wouldn't be all I'd take, and I think you believe me."

He released the boy and loaded himself into his Jeep, lowering the family to the ground. He told them to "have a nice night," then began his journey back to New York.

~*~*~

Sylar knew he couldn't stay put for long. He'd only been home a couple days when he started noticing shadowy figures lurking just outside his periphery and he was pretty dang sure it wasn't his imagination. Or the fact that he wasn't sleeping well and might be hallucinating. Because he'd _never_ do something like let his paranoia keep him up at night, or anything. The last straw came when he had left a local market and was nearly home, a long loaf of fresh bread rising out of a grocery bag, looking very much forward to popping the cork on a bold 2006 Travicello and making himself some nice linguine pescatore, when he noticed a familiar, prickly buzzing sensation between his ears. He'd had all he could take.

That night he decided he was eating his last meal as a sedentary man. Before bed he drained the last dregs from his wine glass with a bitter taste of desolation, astonished how the prospect of the open road felt so much like a trap. Tomorrow he would wake up a nomad. He packed lightly, intending to take only clothing, soap and shampoo, toothbrush and toothpaste, and also his clocksmith tools figuring he could rely on odd jobs to keep cash in his pocket. Under the covers, before he turned off the lamp, he sat propped up with his laptop warming his thighs canceling credit cards then accessing the list of names that he, too, gleaned from the bunker before he lit the whole damn place up like Christmas with one big lightning bolt.

The names on the screen in front of him, those people... if they weren't already suffering a fate worse than death, they were headed for it. The death he could grant them (he considered it freedom really), while not painless, would certainly be more quick. He would take what they weren't using and perhaps someday he could figure out a way to stop the shadow people. Everyone would love him... if the cops or the FBI didn't sniff him out first.

He chose Dominic Jones to be the first. He was a bank teller for First National in Boston, a west side branch, and was capable of out-of-body experiences. Sylar had grown weary of not knowing exactly where his adversaries were coming from, scared that he wouldn't know until it was too late - this was an ability that would prove its worth.

The next day, as he was standing in the lobby pretending to fill out a deposit slip he watched this Dominic and came to the conclusion that the only thing the droll, pudgy-lipped creton was using that ability for was to take mini-vacations in between customers. He'd be here at closing time. He'd get this show on the road.

~*~*~

"Claire."

"Craig."

"I've got him. There's a Jeep here and everything."

"Does he see you?"

"God I hope not."

"What's he doing?"

"Nothing yet, just observing."

"Get out of there. He's a private killer, he's not gonna do anything with so many people around. No need to take any risks he'll see you. He's easy to underestimate – he might even already know you're there. I'm picking up my car now, I'll be on my way in a little bit."

Claire hung up her phone and stood by the baggage claim, waiting for her small overnight bag. After having collected it she made her way to the car rental counter where she confirmed the reservation Micah had made for her and gathered her keys. She turned and stared straight into the face of an only slightly out of breath and windblown Craig. With a gentlemanly "_ma'am_" he made a chivalrous gesture to usher her to her car, taking her bag and opening the door. Claire decided she was going to Sylar-hunt with this guy a little more often.

"So," he started, "something I noticed while doing my recon. He's pretty packed up in that Jeep."

"Well, he doesn't live here, I imagine he wouldn't come with nothing."

"No. He's not packed up for a short visit. He's hitting the road, Claire. He's got road maps and stuff. He's got a plan. We're not always gonna be able to be where he is, you know."

"Well, there's more of us than him, and I plan on trying. I mean, what else can I do? What would you do if you were me?" Oddly enough, she asked because she really wanted to know, wanted to hear an answer from someone who carried the amount of wisdom he did. Would he want her to call the police and go home? Didn't he know what Sylar would do to a whole squadron of fleshy, powerless cops? She briefly considered calling her dad, suddenly feeling like the lecture might not be so bad. To her dismay, Craig didn't answer. He merely took his attention from the steering wheel to look at her, only for a moment, long enough to convey with his expressive eyes his acquiescence and understanding, and something else, something she couldn't decipher. Admiration? Attraction? Respect? After a pause, she continued.

"By the way, thanks for letting me stay with you. I really hope it's not too much trouble..."

"Of course not. The bed's just happy to get some use."

They both blushed the instant it came out of his mouth. He switched tactics.

"I guess what I was getting at was... what about you?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well - and pardon if this comes out wrong 'cause I'm not really the kind of guy that beats around the bush - but what if you get so wrapped up chasing this guy that you forget to just _live_? What about finishing degrees and exciting careers and falling in love and having a dozen kids and what not? I know you feel like you have a responsibility to clean up this mess you think you've made, but it feels like it's got something a little more to do with revenge, for the things he did to you. And you're not responsible for the rest of the world, Claire - you can't keep bad things from happening to good people everywhere, all the time. Do you really want to chase him forever?"

Claire couldn't think of anything to say immediately. The silence became a bit awkward.

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have -"

"No, it's okay. Truly, I appreciate your honesty. It's just, with this ability... Craig, you know I'm never going to die, right? Do you know that? I guess… I guess I can't really see myself as the '_marriage and kids_' type, you know? Degrees and careers are a good way to fill the time, which I think you can understand, and something I'll _love_ doing, but for me they're not permanent. That's because nothing is. Except _him_. What if chasing him is all I really have?"

He pulled the car to the side of the road. He turned to her and captured her chin in his hand leaving the other resting on the steering wheel. She could feel the vibration of the idling engine through his fingertips.

"I really hope you don't mean any of that. Your life may be eternal but it's still a _life_, not a prolonged death." He exhaled a shy breath and turned to gaze out the windshield. "I was hoping to ask you to dinner later, you know, assuming we'd survived and all. I like you, and I hope you won't give up on me before you've given me a chance." The hand touching her face retracted and ran through his own unruly locks.

She reached out and lightly touched his knee before replying, "Assuming we survive, I think I'd really like that."

~*~*~

Sylar pressed his ear to the knob, his telekinetic hand arranging the pins of the lock allowing them to work their magic. Once the door quietly swung inward he was bombarded by the smell of burnt toast. He would've bet money that this Dominic Jones wholly subsisted on ramen noodles, eggs, bacon, peanut butter, jelly, and burnt toast. Amazing he could even tie his shoes. Sylar thought he must have stood in the kitchen watching the man simultaneously spread butter on the charbroiled bread and check his e-mail with his laptop on the counter for five whole minutes before he ever had the presence of mind to notice there was another body in his apartment – a very uninvited one. Mouth full and dripping with crumbs, he had turned and frozen where he stood, eyes wide with surprise. Sylar cracked up laughing and pinched the bridge of his nose while flicking the laptop away and pinning the man up against the cupboards.

"Dude, I could've killed you six times by now," he giggled. "Fortunately, it's only gotta stick once."

He raised his hand.

A gust of wind blew in from behind him – one that snapped a collar around his neck before disappearing. Dominic smacked the counter and tumbled to the floor as Sylar whipped around to face a very familiar golden haloed warrior, arm outstretched, weapon in hand. For a moment that lasted an eternity, their eyes met. The look he gave her was certainly angry and it carried a heavy silent warning, however it also contained a quiet plea and a carefully hidden undercurrent of respect. She didn't care about his anger, she didn't care about his pleas, and she didn't want his respect – she was here to do a job. She fired the shot and buried a tranquilizer dart deep into the muscle of his chest. His look turned to one of betrayal as he plucked the syringe away.

"Claire…"

"_Sylar_. I'm sorry, but this is for the best of everyone involved."

He felt her lie like a cold tooth, and nearly winced.

"Don't lie to me, you're not sorry."

The very moment he whispered the words he crumpled to the floor allowing Claire a clear view of his intended victim frozen petrified in the kitchen. With a blur, Craig reappeared at the terrified man's shoulder.

"You okay buddy?"

He stuttered a slack-jawed incoherent response.

"Well, that's okay but we need to -"

Craig stopped mid-sentence when a window in the front room shattered and a whining, glittering object crashed inside, skidding along the hardwood floor to smack into Claire's heels.

"Crap."

'Hold them off!" Craig cried as he whizzed around Claire, collecting the object before he vacated the premises faster than anyone could see. Claire pulled another tranq gun from where it was tucked in her belt at the small of her back. She dropped her entire supply of tranq darts between her feet to form a pile – she intended to hold her position. With a weapon in each hand she called to Dominic.

"Get DOWN!"

The sound of more bursting windows was quickly replaced by footsteps slapping on the wood. Black-suits began to fill the apartment. She fired at the two who approached her first, then dropped to reload as quickly as she could. Another object with flickering lights rolled up to her toes. She abandoned her frantic quest to jam another dart into the slide of her tranq gun and, instead, ducked her hand inside her jacket pocket pulling out a more substantial pistol – the lead-shootin' kind. She kicked the object away then fired two shots, blasting it to pieces. She drew up to her full height, handgun in her right hand, tranq in her left, hair brushing her shoulders as she stared down her enemies, tensed and ready, wondering who'd be next.

Her pursuers drew up short when they realized she was equipped with more deadly force than before, but that didn't stop Claire from understanding there were still enough of them to overpower her. She had enough ammo, but not enough guns. She was going to need help, and Dominic's out-of-body experiences weren't exactly what she'd had in mind.

There was a sudden cry and a brewing commotion from behind the crowd of black-suits. She saw arms flail upwards in the air. Many turned to face their attacker, whom Claire knew to be Craig, having returned from depositing the debilitating device into parts unknown. It was the break she needed. She tossed her tranq gun to Dominic where it slipped clumsily through his hands before falling to the floor (where it amazingly didn't go off), then she tucked her pistol behind her back. Fishing around in her jacket pockets she knelt by Sylar, finding the tool that would unlock his collar. Begrudgingly, she used it.

"Are you crazy?" Dominic stammered after he'd retrieved the tranquilizer gun and held it out before him, shaking.

"Hush. Cover me."

She wrenched the collar from Sylar's neck and tucked it into her jacket. She proceeded to land several satisfying blows to his face, only half in an attempt to wake him up. Without the collar, once his abilities had been restored, his cellular regeneration should've been enough to start forcing the tranquilizer out of his system. With amazing quickness he jerked his head away from her, and clamped his hands down on her wrists.

"What the f-"

"The shadow people are attacking us. You need to use your powers."

His vision having cleared, he peered past her shoulder and saw what she was referring to.

"Ah. Yes."

Sylar stood and with one motion crammed the black-suits against the walls where he paralyzed them. The sea having been parted, Craig was left to stand, hands on knees, breathing heavily with swollen knuckles.

"Let it never be said," he told Claire, "that you don't show me a good time."

Sylar turned to Claire and with a smirk he quipped, "New boyfriend?"

Her only response was to hold out her hand. "Keys."

Craig wasted no time while the killer was distracted. He streaked past them to link elbows with Dominic where he told the man, "Come with me." In the blink of an eye, he'd dragged him from the apartment to Claire's rental car and the freedom of the empty street.

"You're not driving," Sylar stated very plainly.

"Yes, I _am_. They're gonna chase us and _healing myself_ isn't gonna make them stop, right? Because that's sooo scary? Dumbass. _Keys_."

When he hesitated, she added, "You wanted your powers, now you've got 'em. And we need them. How's that for specialness and glory? Now give me the damn _keys_!"

Gritting his teeth, he muttered something about hating logic while he dug in his pocket. Surrendering the keyring to her they made a mad dash to his stolen Jeep where it sat waiting, its doorless entries a welcome sight. In a fashion that would make the Dukes of Hazzard proud they slung themselves inside. The motor roared to life and Claire put the pedal to the floor, the squalling tires painting a smoking black smear behind them.

"Can you even see over the steering wheel?"

"Shut up, stupid."

Sylar reached across the vehicle, partially obscuring Claire's tenuous view of the road.

"What the hell are you doing?!?" She smacked at him with her open hand.

"Gotta get rid of the soft top!"

"_Hello_, Mr. Telekinesis!!!"

He exhaled a frustrated sigh and the top cover of the vehicle flew away into the sky seemingly of its own volition. Sylar turned, putting his knees in the seat, and watched behind them. Just before they crested a hill he saw the angry black figures swarming out of the apartment building.

"Here they come – holy _shit_!" A pair of Jeeps cut into the intersection, immediately on their rear bumper, from somewhere behind a building, out of sight. They peeled sideways before gaining traction with the road and accelerating. "Faster Claire!"

"_Slow them down_, you bum!!! Jesus Christ, I coulda just _left_ you there! Worthless piece of…"

Sylar gripped the back of his seat as hard as he could to try to stabilize himself. He raised his arm and clenched his jaw –

"Aaaeeeiiigh!!!!" Claire screamed and yanked the wheel when another pair of Jeeps jutted out in front of them in an attempt to cut them off. Narrowly missing oncoming traffic, horns blaring at her, she careened to the left onto a busy four-lane cross street. Sylar managed to latch onto the roll cage as he was nearly thrown from the vehicle.

"YOU CRAZY BITCH!!!!!" He yanked himself back inside a split second before getting nailed by a parked car.

"_I'm_ crazy??? _Me_?" Claire glanced to her left as one of their now four pursuers drew up along the driver's side, its passengers brandishing a wide array of weaponry. She had enough time to consider how dangerous it would be for her to lose control of the wheel with the current speed they were travelling before Sylar's arm shot out in front of her, an inch from her nose. The enemy vehicle, in a spectacular spray of metal and glass, collided with two other vehicles as it flipped across the road and came to a stop in a large cemetery on the opposite side, taking out several ornate headstones with it. Claire picked up the road atlas from the middle console and began to savagely beat Sylar with it about the head and shoulders.

"NO! BAD!!" *whack*whack *whack* "NO KILLING PEOPLE!!!!" *whack*whack* "STOP IT!!!!!"

The road atlas joined the soft top cover somewhere in the sky and Sylar made a move to choke the girl when suddenly the force of a collision from behind slammed him into the windshield, spiderwebbing it and bloodying him in several places… temporarily. Before he could right himself, Claire tugged the wheel to the right in an attempt to throw the black-suits off landing Sylar head-first onto her lap.

"OFF!" She smacked the top of his head.

"I think I hate you…" he grumbled, pulling himself up.

"You killed my parents," she ground out, "I thought that was _implied_."

"Okay, first of all," he began, having resumed his position against the back of his seat, furiously flinging lightning behind them, "Nathan Petrelli had to be stopped, he was a slime ball. And he _never_ deserved you. As for mommy, that was…. an accident… sort of."

"An _ACCIDENT_? I can't believe we're talking about this… in the middle of a _car chase_…" She placed a disbelieving hand on her forehead.

"Yes, I injected her with adrenaline. Yes, I knew she'd lose control of her ability, making _that_ situation a bit more interesting. _NO_, I didn't exactly know she'd… _blow up_."

"Interesting? _INTERESTING_???"

"Nevermind. Yay! Two down, one left." He'd successfully changed the subject _and_ fried the tires off two of the three remaining pursuant vehicles.

"Left!" Claire cried in warning as she yanked the wheel again. "OH SHIT!" A couple red and white "ROAD CLOSED" sawhorses went flying overhead. It appeared as if a culvert under the street was being replaced, which meant that directly ahead of them a gigantic swath of pavement was completely missing and in its place was a widely gaping maw, big enough to swallow a few vehicles. "SYLAR! MAKE US FLY!!! DO IT NOW!!!"

"_WHAT_?!? Make us _WHAT_?!? Are you out of your – goddammit!"

He was out of time. He squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his forehead hard into the headrest with the effort. He felt Claire floor it one more time, felt the engine rev with power. He used the burst of forward momentum that carried them over the lip of the hole as he wrapped every ounce of his energy around the Jeep and carried it safely to the other side. They soared.

"WHOOO HOOOOOOOO!!!!!!" Claire cheered, both arms in the air.

Their last follower was not so lucky.

After a pillowy soft landing Claire cranked another hard right and left the scene behind.

Sylar turned around and collapsed into his seat. He was still and quiet for a long time while Claire was happy to put more distance between them and whoever else might be chasing. After several blocks, however, she put an end to the uneasy silence.

"I know what Nathan did was wrong. But he didn't want to _kill_ anyone, certainly not as many people as _you've_ killed. You had no right to judge him, and certainly no right to take his life."

"Claire," he replied while absentmindedly rubbing his eyes, "you don't know anything about me. And I don't think you want to."

When what he'd said failed to elicit any response he opened his eyes and discovered the driver's seat was empty. He whipped around to look out the back and saw Claire's broken form tumbling away behind him. When she rolled to a stop she sat up, snapped a bone back in place, smiled, and waved. He turned just in time to see the brick wall coming – a dead end.

"Fuck," he whispered as the crash robbed him of his consciousness. Before he came to, he dreamed of her smile. She had _smiled_ at him.

~*~*~

Claire would've watched the head-on collision with remorse if she didn't know her victim would eventually just get up and walk away. He may not have had the same numbness to pain that she had, but he'd live. She winced as she witnessed the Jeep smash into the wall with enough force to crush it like an accordion, flinging dirt, metal, glass, bricks, and hubcaps in all directions. She dusted herself off and patted herself down making sure the objects she carried on her person were still, for the most part, intact. She turned slowly, taking in her surroundings, hoping she hadn't drawn too much attention. She vainly hoped no one had called the cops. She jumped when her cell phone rang. When she took it out she noticed its face was cracked and the hinge that allowed it to flip open was oddly angled, but it worked. It was Craig.

"Craig."

"Claire. You okay?"

"I'm perfect, relatively speaking."

"Still got yer buddy?"

"Nope, I, uh… heh. I dropped him off."

"I'm not gonna ask. Where are you?"

"I think I'm near Castle Island Park – I thought I saw a sign."

"Sure, okay. I'm on my way."

Not wanting to be around when Sylar emerged from the wreckage, which was _sure_ to attract the local authorities, she started walking. He was very likely to be quite upset with her. She hiked the couple blocks it took her to reach the park. She didn't have to wait long until she was joined by two men in a champagne colored rental sedan. Craig and Dominic climbed out and greeted her. She was quite a sight – clothes ripped, dirt-caked, and bloodstained, her hair a rat's nest, but like she'd claimed her physical person was pristine.

"You looked roughed up," Craig began. "Did he hurt you?" He realized the absurdity of the statement, but couldn't help that it was reflex to ask.

"Really, I'm fine. We don't have much time. Dominic, you have to realize that you can't go home -"

"That guy wanted to kill me didn't he."

"Yes. And on top of that there are still unconscious agents in your apartment. Believe it or not, they're capable of things worse than death."

"Stay here, I'll be right back," Craig interrupted. He handed Claire the car keys and without even a flash he was gone.

"Take these." She handed them to Dominic. "When Craig gets back, I want you to take this car and go as far as you can from here. Don't go home, don't visit family or friends. Get cash, stay in a hotel room. Stay for a several days if you can – call in to work, do whatever you have to do. Don't worry about the car – we'll take care of it."

Craig reappeared carrying a trash bag filled with what Claire and Dominic presumed were clothes and personal effects. He placed it in the trunk of the car. Dominic ran his thick fingers through his ruddy hair, clearly bewildered and overwhelmed.

"What do they want with me? I'm… I'm nobody…"

"You're not nobody," Craig corrected. "You're someone with an extraordinary ability. One that people covet."

"But -"

"Dominic," Claire broke in, "unfortunately we are not normal people. I started learning a while ago that I'm not destined for a _normal_ life. I think, deep down, you've always known that too. Right now that life completely depends on whether or not you can make yourself disappear."

"For how long?"

Claire met Craig's eyes. She remembered the conversation they'd had earlier, about not being able to be everywhere at once. About not being able to prevent bad things from happening to good people all the time. She didn't know what to say. Craig spoke for her.

"We're working on that."

He shook Dominic's hand with a pleasant, "Pleasure to meet you," then sent the man on his way. As they watched the car disappear over the horizon Claire sent a text message to Micah asking him to extend the term on the rental by a week or more.

"So," Craig began, placing an arm around her shoulders. She sank into his warmth, a feeling of accomplishment spreading through her tired and aching body. "Plane back to jersey or a maybe a warm cup o' chowdah?"

"Oh definitely the chowder," she agreed, slipping her arm around his waist and looping her fingers into one of his belt loops. She beamed up at him. "I believe we'd already discussed dinner." She was starving.

"Yes. Yes we did."

~*~*~

Sylar had extracted himself from the wreckage shortly before the police arrived. He had pulled a torn piece of seat belt into his mouth and gripped it between his gritted teeth as he put his bones back into place, knowing what precious little time he had. Whole again, he sifted through the debris collecting any evidence of his identity. He grabbed his backpack and duffel out of the back and set off away from the scene. He still looked like death warmed over he figured he'd eventually have to stop and change clothing, and check the status of his laptop. He wasted no time, however, getting as far from the decimated Jeep as possible. It was a shame… he thought he'd looked good in it.

When the police did finally arrive, they set up a search grid (considering the fact that the vehicle was completely devoid of any human presence and it certainly didn't drive _itself_ into a brick wall was more than a little interesting) and started taking samples of hair, fingerprints, and blood found inside. A quick scan on the license plate delivered extremely suspicious results. Not only was the white 2006 Jeep Wrangler not driven by anyone, it wasn't _owned_ by anyone either. While the plate number was legitimate, it was as if the owner had been completely erased.

One of the officers on site decided it might be a good idea to phone a friend with the FBI.

**A/N: So who is the Craig guy anyway and how come he keeps jackin' up our Sylaire??? Patience my pets. He has a purpose =D**

**A/N #2: Omg so I forgot something... again... and ended up having to update this twice. I swear to god it's becoming tradition.**


	8. Tom and Jerry Part Two

**A/N: Man alive this chapter was hard to write. I mean, I did proofread after proofread and on and on... The next one ain't gonna be a walk in the park either. The end of this chapter and the beginning of the next marks a real turning point for this story and I think it'll start becoming obvious. We're fast approaching a place where the title of this story will become apparent as well - we'll start moving on into the future soon wheeee!!! Hang on to your hats time travelers! And, on a side note, I still love writing Noah Bennett. Contrary to common belief, he is actually my favorite Heroes character and I think I might have to write a companion fic for him once this behemoth is complete =D Anyhoo, on with the show!!!**

**I don't own Heroes or anything remotely related and I bow humbly before the television gods, please have mercy on me. Rated "M" for language, some violence, some blood & guts, and eventually some sexual imagery. And please review! If I've massively screwed something up, I'd like to know =D**

**8) Tom and Jerry – Part Two**

*** _Three months later_ ***

Brandy Harris was an avid cyclist, that much was apparent. Sylar'd had the choice of seducing her or sneaking into her apartment and waiting for her - he'd chosen the latter. After his last encounter with Claire he still wasn't really in the mood to be charming. He'd watched Brandy exit, toss a steaming travel mug of coffee or tea into the water bottle cage of her commuter bike, secure the waist strap of her messenger bag and the chin strap of her pink helmet, then ride off to the local bookstore he thought maybe she owned.

He entered her modest studio apartment and the first thing he noticed were the posts sticking out of the walls, parallel to the floor. Peeking around he eventually found two mountain bikes hanging, one over the other, from the posts. _That's_ what they were for. He also found a couple road racing bikes, one he was pretty sure cost more than a car. It was made of titanium. There were hobbies, but this, he thought, bordered on obsession. And he would know.

While stalking the girl (a term he affectionately referred to as "doing his homework") he'd heard tales of how the girl was good luck to ride with, regardless of terrain. She never got hurt, and no one who rode with her ever sustained any injury. As if to lend credence to the claims, she had a case in her home filled with trophies - particularly freestyle mountain biking awards. Looking past his reflection in the glass, reading the words engraved in the marble platform bearing a golden statue of an airborne rider, he recalled the specific mention of a time she'd rode, miraculously, down a 65-foot cliff face without so much as a scratch. But he knew _why_.

The girl was capable of creating force fields - little bubbles protecting her body from ever having any contact with the ground. While the sport she enjoyed was clearly admirable and he had respect for her even if he thought she cheated, it wasn't like she was using her ability to keep crazy evil scientists from capturing, torturing, or killing innocent people or anything. Innocent people like him. Well, _people_ like him. It was best served on someone who had a plan, or someone who was capable of one, or at least someone who was aware anything bad was actually happening. It would also be really handy when it came to keeping those damn collars off his neck.

While the apartment was modern and charming, it was sadly lacking when it came to closet space - or what, in Sylar-speak, translated to "hiding places". He left, enjoyed a light lunch at a sushi place around the corner, then sat reading in the park until it came time for her shift to end. When she came home, rolling her bike inside and opting not to hang it on the wall, she accepted a phone call and made a sandwich, completely unaware that a killer was waiting for her in the shower.

~*~*~

Claire nestled further into the comfort of cool sheets and warm skin. She rubbed a leg over Craig's naked sleeping form, enjoying one of those exceptionally rare seven mornings per year. She was determined not to let anything spoil this moment, regardless of the fact that she was kind of getting hungry and she really had to pee. She had graduated a few weeks ago and was starting the interviewing process. She had two interviews later that afternoon a mere train ride into New York from Craig's house - she had all morning to be lazy. It would be a week until her next interview in Charleston, S.C.

She did eventually relent to her insistent bladder and upon returning to bed her cell phone rang. She rubbed her cringing face when Craig stirred, completely interrupting the tranquility she had been looking forward to.

"Hello?" Someone had better have died.

"Hey Claire."

"Molly... so early..."

"It's ten. And he's moved again. 12508 W. Chestnut in Albany. Anyone we know?"

"I'll -" with a puff of air Craig appeared, mussy-headed but infuriatingly bright-eyed, at her elbow with her laptop in hand, "- look."

Brandy Harris, capable of small, personal force fields. Claire briefly wondered why a telekinetic - someone who shielded a broken shuttle from atmospheric re-entry - would need an ability like that. Perhaps using telekinesis for the same effect was very difficult. She pictured the memory of a charred, skeletal Sylar - he had been so focused on keeping the shuttle in one piece that his regenerative capabilities had almost completely shut down - he had barely survived. She also remembered him being somewhat reticent about picking up the Jeep and carrying it to safety across a large hole in the road. She reminded herself that, while Sylar had been using his third hand for many years, it still wasn't _his_ native ability and he may never truly have a complete grasp over it. Maybe he thought Brandy's ability would make certain tasks easier, she didn't know. Maybe he was afraid of being crushed in another head-on collision – a valid concern as Claire would've been overjoyed at such an opportunity. Regardless, the girl would need to be warned.

"As far as I can tell, this Brandy isn't home - she's at a different location, several blocks away," Molly continued.

"She's probably at work. She's a lucky girl - I have to be in New York in a few hours. I'll try to reach her about the time she gets home."

Hanging up the phone she turned to Craig who, sadly, had found a pair of pajama pants and was also standing, not lying naked in bed. The prospect of breakfast, however, brightened her mood.

"Well," she said to him, "looks like I'll be headed to Albany later this afternoon..."

~*~*~

Brandy controlled her shaking fingers as she spread mayonnaise on the bread. She had just received the strangest phone call. Had the girl on the other end not mentioned that she knew about her bubbles – something she'd never told _anyone_ – she would've thought she was some sort of psycho nutjob, regardless of the fact that the phone call was purported to warn her of some _other_ psycho nutjob who was supposedly already inside her apartment. Combined with her confusion about how this _Claire_ girl would even get her phone number, she felt she had little choice but to believe her. Only the truth could be this absurd. She did as she was instructed: she pretended she was on the phone with her mother, laughed a little, asked about dad even though her parents were divorced, then hung up promising she'd call more often. She didn't venture into another room, no matter how badly she wanted a shower, and she didn't bolt for the door. She began making a sandwich, pretending everything was normal, and she stayed where she was waiting for this enigmatic _Claire_ to show up and save her.

She dug a book out of her messenger bag and sat down at her kitchen table. She thumbed through the pages although she was too scared to absorb any of the words. She ate her sandwich as slowly as she could, grimacing at the thought that her last meal might end up being oven roasted turkey with swiss on white. After roughly twenty minutes she heard a car door shut and saw a flashlight blink outside her window four times. Slowly and silently she rose and unlocked her front door but didn't open it. Per her instructions, it was now time for her to face her would-be attacker, to draw him out into the open. She prayed she'd made the right decision putting her faith in the stranger who currently was tensed and ready to spring into action, poised outside her front door – a girl whose face she'd never seen and whose voice sounded no more than seventeen. She prayed that what was happening was really just an elaborate practical joke planned and staged by some friends. _Sick_ friends. Who didn't have some of those, right? She prayed she'd live through the evening. She squared her shoulders and swallowed, her pulse and the sound of her own breath crashing together between her ears, and she placed one foot in front of the other until she reached the doorway to her bedroom. Willing herself not to cry, she closed her eyes, wrapped herself in a bubble, and stepped inside.

The door slammed shut behind her.

~*~*~

Contrary to common belief, Sylar was not an impatient man and was perfectly fine with waiting. Most times. Sometimes. This time was no exception. Bike riding was sweaty work, even if it's just for transportation, and he knew he wouldn't have to wait long for his target to decide it was time to clean up. He busied himself diagnosing the trouble with her leaky faucet (which he then proceeded to fix), meanwhile keeping his ears open, eavesdropping on the minutia of the girl's everyday life. It was during her phone call that he caught a whiff that something might be amiss. Her laughter, her words, something in her tone – it was _false_. Something about that call was a lie, his senses were tingling with it. Was she pretending? Was she _not_ talking to her mother? Who _was_ she talking to? He hung his head and chuckled, he knew who was on the phone. Using one hand to run his fingers through his hair in laughable exasperation, he tucked his other hand into a jacket pocket where he lightly thumbed three plane tickets. They were all to the same location in California, they were all expired having never been used. Three times he'd considered breaking his promise and making his life a whole hell of a lot easier by making Matt Parkman's teenage adopted daughter his next victim. Three times he kept his promise and couldn't understand why, it was like an automatic reflex – his feet wouldn't budge and he couldn't get himself on that plane. Perhaps there was a part of him that enjoyed the thrill of being chased, looked forward to the prospect of having a temporary reprieve from eternal solitude…

He expected the arrival of his diminutive, cherub-faced arch-nemesis any minute. He focused his train of thought trying to anticipate her first move. Would she bring her friends this time? Last time that damn ghost girl caught him just as he'd broken in the target's place – she'd reached her hand out from a light socket and gave him a jolt he wished he could forget. It was an ambush after that – they'd all been there waiting for him. She'd try to collar him or tranq him, one of the two. If she didn't have her friends she didn't have any other tricks up her sleeve. Keeping distance between he and her (and whoever was with her) would be crucial, and his reflexes would have to be quicker this time – especially if her speedster boyfriend was with her.

He heard a car door, he heard Brandy stir. He stretched and practiced some calming breaths. He was ready. He didn't leave his spot in the bathroom. As soon as he heard the girl breathing just inside the doorway to the bedroom he slammed the door shut behind her and telekinetically held it in place creating a physical barrier. Before Brandy could face him he froze her in place. There were more posts covering the wall adjacent to the door, devoid of bicycles or any other adornment. He lifted her slowly and pressed her against the wall between a pair of them. She flinched and squeezed her eyes shut when a loud bang against the door startled her, a tear slipped from her right eye.

"God-DAMN-it Sylar! You piece of shit!!! That girl doesn't have anything you can't already do! What the fuck is _wrong_ with you?!?" Claire didn't even pause to ponder the ridiculousness of her question, instead she kicked at the door again as hard as she could, feeling the joints in her leg vibrate with the force. She didn't realize that the girl indeed had something, and not just the ability to avoid being collared before walking into situations. Like the rest of his targets, she possessed the delicious ability to allow Sylar to riotously piss off Claire Bennett. He didn't answer her, he just laughed and raised his hand, locking eyes with his prey. Her eyes were wide as a deer caught in headlights, and he imagined her pulse was as rapid as a trapped rabbit. He made a move to employ his invisible scalpel when he discovered… he couldn't touch the girl. He tried a second time, harder, but made no further headway. The one thing he wanted from her was the one thing preventing him from taking it – he couldn't cut through her force field. He dropped his hand and brought the other to pinch the bridge of his nose.

"Son of a bitch."

Claire, who had just chosen to listen through the door instead of blowing the doorknob off, both hands tightly gripping a locked and loaded Colt .45 (a graduation present to herself), had been waiting for the sound of his voice. She expected him to monologue the girl and was frankly surprised at his silence. She didn't know the reason for his curse, she didn't care. His exclamation tipped her off to his position, and gave her an idea where she needed to shoot. She knew a caliber of this size would have no trouble blowing holes through the door buying her a few precious moments. She lined up her guessed aim and fired twice. He screamed and she heard two bodies hit the floor. She fired a third time sending the doorknob and locking mechanism flying away in tiny pieces then gave the door a final smack with the heel of her foot. No sooner did it fly inward than did Brandy appear clawing her way around it from the other side, gulping for air and eyes huge with panic. She never made it through. Instead, she was ripped from her trajectory and flung against the opposite wall of her bedroom, hanging above her bed sobbing.

Claire raised her gun as Sylar stood and froze her in place – her sights were trained on him perfectly. She had been practicing with this heftier weapon, her hands had gotten stronger, and she knew his attention was divided. She squeezed the trigger with all her might, attempting to match her strength against his. She groaned with the effort.

"No way, Claire. Enough. You _know_ how much I hate being shot."

"All the more reason to _shoot_ _you_."

"Don't make me break your fingers."

"Gimme your best shot – you _can't_ hurt me."

"You asked for it." But he never got the chance.

Like being struck by an exploding airbag, Claire and Sylar were both bashed up against the wall – the one with the empty posts. Brandy had used her ability offensively, expanding her bubble to fill the whole room. As the numbness of shock began to wear off Claire discovered, at the same time she watched Brandy streak from the room and exit the apartment as fast as she could, that she was stuck to the wall…. impaled on a post, her body hanging limply from it. And she wasn't the only one.

"_Fuck_! Oh _fuck_, goddammit! Son of a _bitch_!"

Claire didn't answer Sylar's cries of pain immediately, instead she brought her elbows behind her and tried to push against the wall. Some of the musculature in her back, however, had been compromised by the injury and on top of that she didn't quite have the leverage.

"_Claire_!!! Fuck! Oh my god…" This wasn't the _first_ time he'd been impaled, and he still hated it.

She knew she should just ignore him and find a way to get down herself. She should just leave him here, find Brandy, and help get the girl out of town.

"CLAIRE!!!!" His breathing had become labored and unless he could get down and allow the wound to heal, he would eventually succumb to blood loss. As would she. And, really, she probably needed his help getting down anyway. She allowed the same weird maternal instinct that had haunted her several months ago to nag at her again.

"Look at me," she called to him, softly. He complied, all animosity toward her draining from his face – it was the most honest expression she'd ever received from him. "Give me your hand." He reached to her and grasped her wrist with surprising strength. Looking at him with a dripping, bloody post jutting out of his chest holding him several feet off the ground, and simultaneously recognizing her identical position, she found herself unable to suppress a tidal wave of giggles. Latching onto his wrist in return, she took a moment to just laugh at the absurdity of the situation. They were stuck – _stuck to a wall_ – like Velcro.

"Claire," he wheezed, "at the risk of being the pot calling the kettle black, *cough*, you are really fucking twisted. WHAT THE HELL IS SO DAMN FUNNY?!?" He dissolved into a wet fit of gagging coughs, spraying blood in an arc in front of him.

"Nothing," she snorted, rubbing her face with her free hand. He started to writhe, panic beginning to claim him. "Stop," she commanded, "bend your knees and put your feet against the wall. On the count of three we're gonna pull against each other with our hands and push off the wall with our feet. That should provide the proper leverage to get us off these posts. Okay? One. Two -"

She was interrupted by the sound of a small motor. They both looked up to see something that resembled a cross between a Cylon and a very angry looking model fighter jet hovering in the doorway. A low, flat apparatus rose from the top of it.

"Oh hell."

The object the machine fired was familiar immediately, and more easily recognizable when Sylar used some of the last of his strength to freeze it in mid-air. It was a collar, intended to be shot across the room where it would latch itself onto an unsuspecting neck. Sylar slammed the bedroom door shut for the second time that evening and did his best to keep it in place. Claire awkwardly crossed her left hand over her body, not letting go of Sylar's wrist, and gripped her .45. She blasted the collar to smithereens (left-handed, she reminded herself proudly) then turned to face him and saw his eyes were clamped shut and his lips pursed with concentration.

"Sylar, can you do this?"

A sizzling noise and the acrid smell of smoke ripped her attention from him – she turned back to the door. A red hot laser was currently burning a hole through the wood, but the progress was slow.

"Don't have… a choice."

"I hope you're ready then. On three. One. Two. Three!"

She pulled against him, he pulled against her, they both pushed against the wall sliding off the posts with sticky wet '_pops_' to land face first on the floor. Sylar immediately sat up on his elbows and reached out a hand, regaining his concentration, eyes wide with fear.

"I've got two bullets left," Claire said, raising her firearm. "Open the door – lemme blast this fucker to hell."

Sylar let the door swing inward and immediately rolled to dodge the line of the laser scorching a path across the carpet. Claire squared her shoulders and put a slight bend in her knees to compensate for the kickback the formidable weapon would deliver her. She fired her two shots, which unexpectedly ricocheted off of an invisible force field surrounding the plane – a shield that crackled with energy when the bullets collided with it. They refracted and careened away nailing Sylar in his left shoulder and side.

"GODDAMMIT CLAIRE!!! I SAID I _HATE_ BEING SHOT!!!"

She turned to him with a shrug, "It was an ACCID-"

The plane fired some shots of its own. Sylar was able to freeze and disintegrate the tranquilizer darts intended for him, but wasn't fast enough to stop the next two - one of which had buried itself deep under Claire's right breast, the other in her neck. She looked down in shock and plucked them away.

"Shit." She collapsed to the floor. The plane fired the rest of its arsenal. Sylar quickly dispatched two more darts and a final collar before blasting the plane with lightning. Black marks charred the door frame and the floor but the floating weapon remained sickeningly perfect. Dismayed, he attempted to disintegrate the force field next but had no success. The plane began to flicker with red lights and made noises he couldn't identify, but if he had to wager a guess he'd say the thing was calling for help. It was time to go.

He telekinetically jammed the bedroom door shut again and wasn't surprised to see the laser resume its work. Multitasking, he divided his attention to the bedroom window. He ripped the curtains and rods away from it and flung it open, grateful the apartment was on the ground floor. He pulled himself up onto the windowsill and was halfway out when he stopped. He slowly and reluctantly lowered himself back inside and sighed. He tried one more time to leave yet found he still couldn't.

"Fuck," he breathed as he pounded his fist against the wall. He turned to Claire. He had _promised_. He had promised he wouldn't hurt Matt Parkman's family and he had promised he wouldn't hurt the Bennett family. She had invited him to come "pick on" her in their stead… but he still couldn't do it. He couldn't leave her here and he couldn't let the black-suits take her. One hundred years from now he would still be alone. He knelt beside her, brought an arm under her knees and used the other arm to cradle her soft, golden-haired head against his chest. He then lifted her and, grimacing, dropped her through the window. As he, too, landed on the other side he could hear the machine making its final cuts on the door. Tossing her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, praying her ability wouldn't wake her up in this position, he ran.

He darted out into a street that was under construction – traffic cones framing an area of torn pavement containing an open manhole, cordoned off by four posts and some yellow cautionary tape. Not willing to hear the sounds of her bones breaking, he tossed her inside and clamped his hands over his ears. Once he was certain she'd hit the bottom he descended the ladder, pulling the lid over his head. He collected her in his arms, bloody (although admittedly he wasn't sure the blood didn't come from her earlier impalement) and soaked with sewer water or rainfall runoff, whatever it was. He gently set her broken arm and lodged her dislocated shoulder and kneecap back in place then carried them both off down the tunnel, free hand holding a ball of energy for light. He'd made it several paces when a grinding noise froze him in his tracks. His imagination tried to trick him into believing the sound came from somewhere within the tunnel – perhaps a colony of rats or a disturbed vagrant – but he knew better. He heard the manhole cover slide away behind him, and the toy-plane motor hummed echoing off the walls. Coming to an intersection he sat Claire down in an alcove, taking the time to wipe her hair away from her face, and then turned to face their attacker. He wasn't sure exactly what he was going to do, he was out of options. The red lights flickered into view as the plane approached then as suddenly as it had arrived it stopped, making no further action. It hovered innocuously above the running stream of water.

Sylar's steps splashed as he nervously walked over to the small vehicle, and he was surprised to find that the force field it had used to surround itself earlier had vanished. Daring to make a small test, he knocked on the top of its tinny surface with his knuckles. It made no move to stop him or incapacitate him in any way.

"How strange…" he muttered. Unable to resist seizing the opportunity he plucked the plane from where it floated in mid-air and carried it over to the alcove where Claire rested. As if it were nothing more than a toy, he set it in front of him as he lowered himself to sit Indian-style.

"How do you work," he mused, allowing the easy euphoric trance of discovery to slip over him like a comfortable, well-worn sweater. Keeping his lightning ball in his left hand, he used his right hand in combination with his telekinetic third hand to open the top cover of the little flying machine. Before long he had most of it dismantled and was completely engrossed in reading its circuitry and deciphering its programming – much too busy to notice Claire stir and stretch, dragging the back of her left hand across her yawning face.

She sat up with a start when she realized she was in a dark, drippy location, soaking wet, and apparently still in the company of Sylar. In the dark she could see the outline of his face lit by the eerie glow in his hand, focused on the mess of wiring, microchips, and metal pieces strewn about him.

"Where are we? What are you… doing? How did you tame that thing?"

He didn't answer her. She leaned in close to him and waved her hand in front of his face as if he were deaf, receiving equally little response. Giving up, she stood and attempted to wring the moisture and grime from her shirt before stepping out of the alcove, hoping to allow her eyes to adjust to the darkness enough to take a peek around.

"I think when it followed us down here it got far enough underground that the signal controlling it could no longer reach," he finally spoke. "I think I can use some small charges to re-etch the circuitry and change its programming, make it stop chasing us."

"Do you really think you can -"

"I need to concentrate."

Claire sat and allowed him some quiet, wringing out her hair and drumming her fingers… until she couldn't take it anymore.

"What did you mean '_he never deserved you_'?"

"Huh?"

"You said that to me, a few months ago. You were talking about Nathan."

"Before or _after_ you crunched me into a brick wall?"

"Umm I would think _before_. Not much happened after."

"Right. Not for _you_. Yeah, so, he knocks up your mom then cuts out of her life. _Your_ life. He abandoned you. I guess I've got a problem with guys like that."

"But he -"

"Yeah, he struck up some sort of relationship with you. After _you_ found _him_." He met her eyes, waving some errant wires as he spoke. "You don't think you did all the work there? You really think that if you hadn't stepped into his life he would've eventually found his conscience?"

She paused, considering his words. "What's weird is you sound more pissed about it than I do." All that earned her was a death glare. "So," she ventured cautiously, "what happened to _you_?"

He averted his gaze, returning it to his project. "I don't understand your question." He understood it perfectly.

"Just seems I struck a nerve is all, a little close to home maybe? I don't really think killers are _born_ the way they are – something _happens_. Killers are _made_. So what happened to you?"

"Stop it, Claire."

"What, I shouldn't know my enemy? You get so touchy sometimes, I swear. Like a big girl. So, what? I should just operate on hearsay instead of asking questions? Somehow I didn't think you'd appreciate that very much – you aren't happy I showed you just a _smidgen_ of respect?"

"You don't understand."

"Yeah, I get it. '_I don't know anything about you and I don't want to_.' Well, maybe I _do_. What else am I supposed to use against you?" She smiled disarmingly. "I could keep on just using regular ol' bullets…"

"You don't understand _hunger_."

"You're right. I don't. _Explain_ it."

Silence. She would've thought maybe he didn't hear her or was just ignoring her if she couldn't see the shadows crinkling around his troubled, furrowed brow. She knew she was about to cross a line, but she couldn't help herself. She pushed the envelope.

"What sort of hunger? Is that, like, another name for the tiny little evil voice in your head telling you to kill people?"

"Leave it, Claire."

"No, seriously, I wanna know, is it that you're not _good_ _enough_, so -"

In a flash he launched from his position and had her pinned against the wall of the alcove by her throat. She gasped and struggled but his grip never failed, his nostrils flared and his eyes flashed with an inner fire stoked by fury and something more. Insecurity?

"I could've just left you back there, you know that right? Made my life a whole lot easier. But I didn't. I could've broken my promise to you months ago, but I didn't. Look at these!" He ripped the plane tickets from his pocket and waved them next to her nose, regardless of the fact they were too dark to be seen. "To California, Claire. Three times now I got myself talked out of ripping little Molly apart. You'd never find me again! But _NO_ – I kept up my end of the bargain and I let you chase me around and beat the shit out of me and shoot me full of holes and tranq me and have your little way with me like a fucking doll and now _this_?!? A fucking _inquisition_?!? How 'bout you do something for _me_ for being such a nice guy!" He brought his nose inches from hers. "I said _LEAVE IT_. Shut up and let me work."

"You're _not_ a nice guy," she choked. He dropped her anyway and stalked back to the tiny jet, shoulders heaving as he tried to repress his sudden rage.

Claire rubbed her neck, more out of insolence than anything, and sat back down, hugging her knees. She watched him, wondering what was racing through his mind, before vocalizing her thoughts.

"Is that why you killed Elle?" she asked, as softly as she could. "Did she get too close to you?"

Sylar placed the chip he'd been working with back inside the plane. "Why do you suddenly want to talk to me so damn much?" He rubbed his face and ran his fingers through his hair, sitting with his eyes closed. Giving up, he released a soft breath. "She wanted to die," he responded carefully.

"She _wanted_ to die? Are you kidding me?"

He was silent a moment. "She never loved me. Alright? Not really. She wanted an escape." He sighed. "Our last night together she said something about finally just getting to be what we were. She knew _exactly_ what _I_ was. But she… She had no idea who _she_ was. She'd been trapped all her life. Her dad was gone, but he'd never been good to her anyway – when she wasn't a tool he basically ignored her – and the Company didn't want her… she didn't know how to _live_. She didn't _want_ to live. She just wanted out. Of everything. And I gave that to her."

"You just did her a _favor_. Just like that." She snapped her fingers.

"Call it what you want."

"And you took her power."

"No, actually, I got that from her before -"

"_What_?" Claire hissed. His eyes snapped up to meet hers, which were suddenly alight with anger and disbelief, and he knew he'd just screwed up big time. Damn his truthful mouth. "Now, I must be going crazy," she continued, "because it just sounded like you said you took her power _without_ killing her." All he could do was stoically return her gaze – there was nothing he could say, and he wasn't going to lie. She jumped to her feet. "You can _do_ that? You… you can fucking _do that_?!? You've been able to do that this _whole time, _haven't you!!! _You_… you sick _fuck_… all those people… _why_?!"

She reached him in two steps. "_What the fuck is the matter with you_?!?" She grunted as she pulled back her elbow and punched him in the face as hard as she could. He felt a _pop_ and immediately tasted the copper tang of blood. She landed on him, her knees flattening his shoulders against the ground. She clamped one of her hands around his adam's apple, squeezing hard, and continued to assault him with her other fist. He never let the thought of using any of his abilities enter his mind. He braced his hands on her legs, trying to push her off, but not hard enough. He allowed her to punish him.

"_Oh my fucking god_!!! You _ASS_!" she screamed, gasping for breath from the exertion. "You sick worthless piece of _shit_!!! What the _fuck_! Why do people have to _die_?!? _WHY_?!?" She matted her fingers in his hair and slammed the back of his head against the wet concrete. When the stars cleared from his vision and his teeth stopped rattling her face was looming directly above his, her breath scalding his cheeks and her hair tickling his bloody nose. "What, does it feel good or something? Do you like the _power_ you have over someone else – is it like rape? Or do you like knowing your face was the last thing someone saw in their final moments? Does it make you feel more significant? Make you feel _better_ about your lousy fucking self?!?"

"Claire -"

"I want you to tell me how you did it, _tell me_ _now_!!!"

"I didn't know I could do it, and I haven't been able to do it since… It's… it's difficult."

"_TELL ME_!!!"

She yanked at his head again.

"_Alright_! Dammit, just stop. Jesus." She didn't move from her position and she didn't let him go. He raised his arms above his head in supplication. "I think I have another ability, empathic mimicry, like Peter. Except I don't think it works the same way. It takes something… I dunno. Extra. Like an emotional bond or a deep understanding of the individual. I spent some time with Elle, tried to fix her, thought maybe we could help each other. Something. I got her ability in return. I don't know how I did it, and I don't know that I could do it again. For someone like me, Claire, it's _difficult_." He turned his face away, twisting the hair still in her fist against his scalp. "I've never told _anyone_ about it."

"Well I can understand why. I can't imagine I'm the _only_ one who'd want to beat the shit out of you." With a final push she climbed off of him and allowed him to sit up, wiping at his nose with his sleeve. She turned and sat facing out of the alcove with her back to him. She was quiet a long time while he finished working on the machine.

"You're a real piece of shit, you know that?"

"Yeah."

She sighed and combed her fingers through her wet hair. She couldn't wait for a shower – couldn't wait to be anywhere else.

"Thanks for not leaving me behind."

"Yeah."

Once the reprogrammed vehicle was put back together they followed the tunnel a significant distance, saying nothing more to each other. They found another ladder ascending to a manhole, one that opened into the parking lot of a large park. The sun had set and they were gratefully blanketed by darkness. The plane hummed to life once more and its lights flickered as it began to hover again on its own. In the blink of an eye it ripped itself from Sylar's hands and disappeared, buzzing off into the trees.

"Where's it going?" Claire asked, breaking their tense silence.

"Presumably to attack its own kind, assuming I did things correctly. I did get kinda distracted."

Claire rolled her eyes and began to walk away.

"So that's it? You're just letting me go?" he called after her. She threw her arms wide as she turned again to face him.

"Sylar, what do you want? Seriously, what? I can't possibly understand you and I can't exactly beat you to death. Are you just gonna stop killing people all of a sudden? _No_. And knowing now that you actually _choose_ to kill people when you don't actually _have_ to… I guess I don't see _my_ work being done here any time soon either. So… what? What's gonna change? What do you want?"

He wanted to tell her he wanted an end to the hunger she didn't understand. He wanted to tell her he wanted to be someone she could be proud of. He wanted to tell her he felt trapped inside his own mind, a slave to a childlike menace with carnal desires he had no control over. He wanted to explain he was both a monster _and_ a victim, that sometimes he felt like two different people. He wanted her to keep punching him. He wanted to ask for her help. Instead, he said nothing.

"Maybe you could do me a favor though, right?" she continued. "Take the rest of the week off? I'm really tired and I have a lot of crap to do."

"Okay."

With that, she left him standing there feeling exposed and vulnerable and loathed and utterly worthless. He knew what Elle had felt – lost and misunderstood. He hated this feeling, how it compelled him to commit unspeakable acts and how he was too weak to deny its insatiable demand. And yet strangely he had to recognize that Claire Bennett now knew things about him no one else knew. She was possibly closer to him than anyone else in the world. It was unsettling and intimate and he didn't know what to do, other than jam his hands into his pockets in an attempt to ward off the early fall New England chill… and walk. He walked for a long time. He didn't know where else to go.

~*~*~

*** _The following Spring_ ***

Claire's train of thought was interrupted when she felt soft fingers thread lovingly through her hair. She turned and beamed into the face of her mother – she'd been drawing lines in her oatmeal with her spoon long enough that it had grown cold and lumpy.

"You ran into him again, didn't you. I can always tell when you're this quiet."

Claire didn't answer, she didn't need to. She took a sip of her orange juice instead.

"I don't like it Claire."

"He can't hurt me mom. And lives have been saved."

"I know. But what about _your_ life? I haven't heard you mention anything about your interviews -"

"The economy's just bad right now. You sound like Craig."

"Pffff, I'd like to think he sounds a little more like _me_," Sandra chuckled. "He loves you. And so do I. He called while you were in the shower, by the way."

"He must be getting lonesome. Maybe we could have him over this weekend?"

"Sure honey. I'll put some fresh sheets in the guest room. Your father could sure use his help in the barn."

Grapes. Of all the silly ways Noah Bennett could've chosen to disguise his sordid resume and unusual past business dealings he chose… growing grapes. Sure, the swath of land on which their Texas home was perched had become particularly lovely – especially this time of year – with rolling green vines and a sprinkling of blossoms promising bountiful harvest, and the soil was the notoriously harsh acidic kind that grew a "good grape", but really… what did the Bennett family truly know about wine? She blamed Mohinder Suresh. She should've known no good could come from spending time with that man – weird space station or not. Nothing was more surreal than coming home from a week in Seattle pimping out her new sheepskin credentials to find their home, reeking of expensive candles, claustrophobic with trays of unpronounceable hors d'oeuvres, packed to exceeding the fire code with overdressed strangers speaking an undecipherable "language of wine" and watching her parents giggle over hushed double entendres pretending to be normal people who _weren't_ hiding an outrageous arsenal of weaponry behind the wine rack in the cellar. The Bennett's _never_ had company. Dad _hated_ company. Company meant close quarters which meant too many hands to watch and not enough space to watch them in. Dad sure liked his barn, though. He had a tractor, and several other large pieces of machinery, and a distillery. And who knows what _else_ he was hiding in secret chambers underneath it like Area freakin' 51. Dad _loved_ his barn.

"Dad looked unusually relaxed at the tasting last night," Claire told her mother, picking up her bowl and glass, joining her at the sink to help clean up. "You think he's coming around to the idea of civilization?"

"I think he was just drunk. Pretty sure he's still upstairs sleeping it off."

She laughed at this – the thought of her dad's blue eyes slightly crossed, that telltale blush to his cheeks…

"I'll find something soon, mom. I haven't given up. Got another one lined up in Kansas City next month. I'm gonna stay with Olivia while I'm there."

"Oh, I like Kansas City. _Great_ food."

They continued idle chit chat, the kind that made her mother happy, and avoided both the topics of Sylar and Claire's extra-curricular duties. After the kitchen was clean Sandra went to pester Noah leaving Claire to place a dutiful if not a tiny bit clandestine phone call to her boyfriend, assuring their feelings for each other, sharing news with each other, making plans for the weekend. She would be happy to see him – she missed his smell and his dimpled smile already. She missed being gazed at in a way that _didn't_ make her feel violated, by dark eyes that _lacked_ the sick malice and the threat of bodily harm. She missed seeing a smile that _wasn't_ dripping with cruel intention. She missed the strong stubbled jaw and dark shock of hair that _didn't_ conceal hungry vengeance. She missed Craig's easy joyful humor and soulful wisdom, and the way his experienced body could make hers whimper with the slightest effort – and _not_ in the bad way. She knew he had to work, but maybe she could get him to spend a long weekend. She'd be back to freeload off of him after she was done in Kansas City.

Maybe he was right she thought as she said, "I love you," and hung up the phone. Maybe mom was right too. Maybe the only person on earth she was responsible for was herself. She couldn't be everywhere all the time. She couldn't stop bad things from happening to everyone. Eternal life or not, maybe there was nothing wrong with putting more emphasis on starting her career and really settling down. She discovered her feet had brought her to the front porch where it faced the southwest. The morning sun behind the house lit up the dew lingering on the lawn and the morning glories. She leaned on a post, enjoying the calm, watching a pair of doves cross the lavender sky. Maybe there was nothing wrong with affording herself a little peace.

Deep in thought she wrapped her sweater around her frame a little tighter and crossed the lawn to the barn. She hadn't spent much time in here – hadn't spent much time with her dad at all. He was uneasy with her activities and, not knowing how to approach the subject with her, he didn't bring up much between them at all. In a way, exploring the building was a little like exploring the man – one she thought she knew only to discover as she grew older that he was nothing like she'd thought and she'd spent most of her life learning him all over again. And again. She shuffled her feet near the machine that glued the labels to the glass bottles (he had a machine for that???) when she felt something beneath the rug. To anyone else it would've felt like an uneven board. Claire wasn't just anyone and she knew what uneven boards were to her _father_. Pulling back the rug and a floorboard or two revealed, sure enough, a hidden hatchway. Even if she'd had an audience she still wouldn't have feigned an attempt at surprise. Rolling her eyes at the predictability of such a thing she grabbed a flashlight from the tool bench, opened the hatch, and crawled inside.

She was smacked in the head by a string at the bottom of a narrow flight of metal stairs. She pulled the string igniting a series of flickering fluorescent bulbs. Several of the items she saw in the immediate vicinity she had expected to see: firearms and other pieces of artillery and body armor, boxes of canned goods, sealed gallons of drinking water, cots and sleeping bags, some books and a pack of cards. Rations in the case of nuclear holocaust? Really? She supposed every ex-weirdo-agent needed someplace to go if they needed to drop off the grid for a while. She would've reconsidered the whole vineyard and winery thing as well, but that was a personal choice.

What she also found were boxes and boxes of files. Old files. Company files. Some of them she recognized as the ones she'd peeked through years before. She could tell there were many missing, but there were enough underneath Noah's barn to tell quite a fanciful story. Then it caught her eye. One box. Labeled with _his_ name.

Sylar.

There were numbers on it that might have been years – the handwriting wasn't her father's and was tough to make out. Not to mention, the box was smudged – it was apparent it had been moved several times. That box contained more information on the man than anyone (with the obvious exception of her father or anyone else who'd had possession of it) had ever seen. It was like the holy grail.

Claire pressed her palm against the phone in her pocket. It was still warm from its recent use. She knew she should turn around, yank off the light switch, and walk back up into her world. She should pour endless hours into her job search online – _not_ reading through dusty old files – and she should grocery shop with her mother. She should welcome Craig into their home and have a lovely dinner with him and make plans for the future and enjoy tons of guiltless but exciting sex behind the barn under the Texas moonlight after her parents had gone to bed. She should put the sick, psychotic, mass-murdering lunatic out of her mind and _not_ border on obsession.

She ran her pinky finger along her bottom lip. There might be some clue in there. Some little tool she could use to put a stop to him forever – some little piece of information, some weakness, some reason why he became what he was that would break him down. _Take_ him down. And it would all be over for good. She could have her life. She could have her career and fall in love and have a dozen kids and no one else would have to die as a result of a decision she made – a deal she made with the devil – and it would all be behind her. Putting aside the thought that psychoanalyzing a killer was a potentially dangerous pastime, she plunked the flashlight down on a table, planted her butt on the floor, and tipped the lid on the box.

An hour later she placed a call to Hiro Nakamura, who really wasn't that excited to hear from her.

~*~*~

Hiro and Claire popped into existence in the dusty parking lot of a diner in the middle of nowhere. Judging by their surroundings it was very obviously the early 80's and the busy highway a few paces away was a popular vacation route serving the last generation of pleasure motorists and road warriors. Hiro looked a tad dizzy – Claire took his hand and led him toward the entrance. As they crossed the parking lot, she noticed a faded yellow sedan sitting, still running, occupied by a dark-haired woman who appeared to be taking a nap. The sun was high and the heat was oppressive, it could've sapped the energy from even the most travel-hardened individual. Leading her companion inside, Claire found a small booth where they sat and took the opportunity to drink some water.

"What are we doing here?" Hiro asked between gulps from his heavily iced glass. Claire rolled the condensation from hers between her fingers.

"Something happens here, at this time. I think we're looking for a -"

She was interrupted by a soft humming, and the sound of a child's voice imitating a motor. Turning to peer over her right shoulder she saw him.

"- a little boy."

He was such a sweet thing, no more than seven years of age, swinging legs dangling above the floor, playing with a little toy car. Feeling her searching gaze on him he turned to look at her, presenting her with his characteristic gigantic chocolate brown eyes. From his stark brow to his small, pink mouth there was no mistaking the identity of the child. Unable to believe her eyes, she lifted her hand and gave him a small wave with the tips of her fingers. He smiled demurely before shyly ducking his eyes to the table top in front of him, swinging his legs a little faster with bashful energy. A waitress blocked her view of him as she delivered a milkshake. A man accompanying the boy left the table as she walked away, joining another couple across the restaurant. Claire watched them converse, wishing she could hear what was being said, and her curiosity piqued when she saw a rather sizeable amount of cash exchange hands between the men.

A disparaging whimper drew her attention back to the youthful Sylar who'd dropped the car in a small hole in the wall and was currently attempting to fish it out. The tip of his little tongue rested on his top lip as the wheels in his head turned, working out his best plan of attack.

"Gabriel! Pay attention boy, been callin' you. C'mere."

The boy cast Claire one last curious glance as he stood and shuffled past her, doing as he was told. He was escorted across the room to be introduced to the couple as they sat waiting for him. The woman placed her hands on him, smoothed back his hair and turned his cheeks as if she were inspecting a puppy. The man Claire guessed to be Gabriel's father shook hands with the other man then pressed his palms onto the boy's shoulders firmly as he whispered something in his ear. He then turned and left.

Claire could see through the windows that that the man had climbed into the running faded yellow sedan with the sleeping woman. A woman who had no idea what was happening inside the restaurant. A woman who was a mother… The car backed out of the parking space and was pulling away…

"Oh my god," Claire whispered as every tingling sense in her body told her she was in the process of witnessing a tragedy.

"Did he just -" Hiro started.

"Yes."

Sylar's father had just sold him, like livestock. _Abandoned_ him. _Sylar had a problem with guys like that_. The same moment Claire made this realization the young boy came to the same conclusion. Ripping himself from the clutches of the strange woman he elicited a heartwrenching cry and ran for the door, flinging himself through it. Claire left Hiro at the table without a word and followed.

She stopped dead in her tracks once her feet hit the dusty ground and watched the scene play out before her, unable to react quickly enough to stop it. The car had nearly made it to the highway but had yet to pull out and drive away – the woman was very awake and arguing violently with the man in the driver's seat. Sylar stood in the middle of the parking lot, trudging slowly toward the car, still having faith that his parents would turn the car around and collect him – that this was just a huge misunderstanding. They would all just go home, any minute now. The woman's scream pierced the air, and something happened in the car – a sudden movement that happened so fast Claire missed it. She looked up in time, however, to watch the woman's blood and chunks of bone and organ tissue spray all over the back glass. The boy made a sound like the air had just been kicked out of him. The passenger door of the car swung open and a body fell out onto the ground. Before the door could be pulled shut again the car spun gravel and dust in a great cloud then squealed smoking tires onto the highway, accelerating quickly and disappearing over the horizon.

Claire clamped a hand over her mouth as the dust cleared. People started stepping out of the diner to see what the commotion was all about. In the background someone shouted, authorities were being called. Through a watery haze of tears she could see the body of Sylar's mother, a woman whose only crime was loving her son, lying in the dirt a grisly mess, missing the top part of her head.

She wanted to reach out to him. His arms were rigid at his sides, fingers splayed wide and shaking, mouth open with shock. His breath came in strangled, bewildered gasps – he was hyperventilating. She wanted to close her hand around those fingers, press his pale cheek to her and stroke the tears from his thick fan of long lashes, tell him it would be okay. She didn't get the chance. The strange woman appeared, snatched the boy up, and ran with his face looking back over her shoulder, arms outstretched. She stuffed him into the back seat of a gray station wagon driven by the man she'd come with, then folded herself into the front seat before they sped away.

Stunned and weeping, she jumped when a warm hand smoothed over her shoulder. She turned to face an equally distressed Hiro.

"Time to go, cheerleader." They blinked away.

Later that night after having set Hiro up a comfy nest on the couch, soothing him with green tea and allowing him his rest after his exertion, Claire was too restless to sleep. She sat on the front porch, watching the stars wink into existence, thinking of her enemy who had suddenly become so much more human. She was struck by epiphany. Claire knew something about Gabriel that no one else did – she knew he was a grown man trapped by a manifested sorrow that called itself Sylar. And as for Sylar – he was nothing more than a traumatized, devastated, angry, and vengeful seven year old boy who desperately sought for attention and significance with absolutely no idea what was the right way to make that happen. Perhaps Gabriel was someone who wanted an end to the hunger, was ready to put everything behind him, to let go and move on and find some peace – to find absolution. Gabriel and Sylar were at odds with each other, and Sylar flat _despised_ Gabriel. Sylar hated being hurt, hated being sad, hated feeling weak, hated being lied to, and carried only a childlike, black and white sense of morality. The two had one thing in common, however. They both sought an end to this feeling of abandonment. Neither of them wanted to die alone. Sylar made sure, then, that they would never _die, _and that he would always have Claire to chase him.

Feeling as if she finally understood, she yawned and allowed her eyelids to become heavy. What Sylar _didn't_ know was that Claire held _all_ of the information, in boxes hidden in a bunker underneath her father's barn. There was a file there… a file on Sylar's mother, a file he'd never seen.

Claire was ready to play hard ball.

**A/N: Whew! The last chapter was so light and this was so heavy! Kinda like following up that salad for dinner with a knocked-out decadent cheesecake for dessert, right? Yay calories! Boo stomachache... Anyhoo, please review! Seriously, I check my email every five minutes like a crack junkie - please feed my habit I love you!!!!**


	9. A Wound That Won't Heal

**A/N: This, too, was a really difficult chapter to write - quite the emotional roller coaster. I've read it over and over to the point that I can't stare at it anymore so I suppose it's time to post LOL! After the reviews for last chapter - which I thank you all SO MUCH for, you're too kind - I feel like Ch8 was a tough act to follow so I hope it lives up to the expectation =D Anyhoo, this chapter also marks a big turning point in this story - I'm happy to be moving on now!**

**I don't own Heroes or anything remotely related and I bow humbly before the television gods, please have mercy on me. Rated "M" for language, some violence, some blood & guts, and eventually some sexual imagery. And please review! If I've massively screwed something up, I'd like to know =D**

**9) A Wound That Won't Heal**

Sylar hadn't been sleeping well. Not only was he haunted by Claire's last words to him (probably the sole reason he hadn't been too active over the past few months), but he was also bothered by the fact that the shadow people were becoming increasingly more difficult to avoid. They had ramped up their offense by sending machines to do the work of men – flying little mechanical demons that seemed impervious to flesh-piercing bullets and bone-slicing telekinesis, they couldn't even be disintegrated. He didn't admit it often, but they were frightening.

He had been hiding outside a small farming community in rural Indiana, receiving room and board from a kind elderly woman in exchange for performing handiwork with livestock and out in the fields until it was recognized he had a flair for fixing tractors and other motorized equipment. He'd been doing fine work, had developed a handsome reputation within the community, and had even indulged himself by occasionally nailing a blonde little farmer's daughter named Stacey. Her burgeoning feelings for him, however, made him feel predatory and were becoming a problem - lust and hunger didn't play well together inside him - and the fact that he was still a hunted target made his feet itchy. It was time he'd considered hitting the road.

What he wanted was a more defensive ability. It was true that he could change his shape, appear as anyone other than himself, allowing him to blend and hide very effectively, but that ability came with particularly nasty side effects and was something he'd promised himself he'd no longer use… or would at least try to limit its use to extreme situations. No, he needed a more useful mechanism of escape. It would've been neat if he could disperse into a cloud or walk through walls…

That night, cozy warm and freshly fed and showered, tucked in under a handmade quilt in a very soft feather bed, he pulled the laptop he'd gone back and stolen from Brandy Harris – presumably while she was off filing a police report – across his lap and plugged in his thumb drive. While the machine was a suitable replacement for the one that had been involved in that unfortunate accident involving a Jeep and a brick wall, he really wished it wasn't… the color it was. Nonetheless he found Olivia Terry's name and address and plotted a course on Google Maps.

This target was going to take extensive planning. He wasn't going to be able to charm her and she was a very slippery character – hence the reason he wanted her. He'd also been out of commission for a little while and his reflexes were probably a little rusty. Maybe he should cause a little mayhem on his way out of town – nothing would brush up his skills like dodging a few bullets. Maybe his liaison with Stacey would have its benefit after all…

Resolving to put more thought into his plan the next day, he turned off the computer, switched off the lamp, rolled over into the downy embrace of the mattress, and went to sleep.

~*~*~

Claire had stopped listening to what Molly was saying about the time she'd mentioned her prom dress. She became completely enraptured in the memory of _own_ prom dress – it had been baby blue satin with an ethereal life of its own, refracting light like the surface of some misty early morning lake. She could still feel the sway of the fabric, with its graceful whisper, hugging her calves as she walked, clad in delicate strappy sandals that had ribbons crossing around her ankles. The dress had been _made_ for slow dancing, and had made her aware she'd never truly felt like a _woman_ before that night. It was magic. That hadn't stopped her, however, from kicking off her shoes and letting her hair down by the end of the evening, head-banging karaoke tunes with her closest girlfriends, screaming their last high school hurrahs before they shoved off into the real world.

"Claire…" Molly interrupted her reverie.

"Huh? Yeah. So, uh, Parker eh?"

"Yeah, Parker." No number of miles could dampen the smile she heard through the phone.

"Does Matt know about this Parker guy?"

"Yeah, he likes him. He's a straight A student."

"Cute, polite, _and_ smart? The perfect trifecta!" She thought of mentioning Craig.

"Yeah, I'm set to marry a hot, rich doctor if he doesn't dump me in college," Molly giggled. "So, anyway -"

"Good lord, Molly, what is all that noise in the background?"

"Oh, that. Yeah, we're remodeling."

So, Molly had a boyfriend, was going to prom, and was getting a new house. Or at least part of one. Claire's parents were moving on to the next chapter in their lives – one in which their children were out of the house, in college or on their own, and they were growing grapes. The girls she had been bunking with that week in Kansas City, Olivia and Lindsay, having been reunited with their identities, had managed to secure positions in their fields and now shared an apartment in a cosmopolitan downtown neighborhood that somehow managed to always smell like coffee. Those were just to name a few – all around her she was surrounded by people in motion, like a cloud of perpetual movement, and she was stuck in the middle. Stagnant. No home of her own, no career, moving on but never moving forward, always existing but never living because she had all the time in the world so why have _goals_…

"Claire? Are you still there?"

"Huh? Gah, I'm sorry, I'm distracted today. What did you say?"

"I _said_ he's moving again. But it's weird – like last time. Very slow, sorta aimless."

"Like how he ended up in Indiana for months," Claire supplied.

"Yes. The closest person on the list to that location was William Grant, and he was still a good three hour drive away. I did a check on him, just in case he was pulling something sneaky, but William Grant is still alive and well in Terre Haute."

"Hmm. I still think Sylar's up to something. So where is he now?"

"Decatur, Illinois."

If he wasn't killing people, why move on? To escape the black-suits? She'd be lying if she said she hadn't seen odd shadows moving out of the corner of her eye on occasion, but she too had been developing a bad habit of moving around a lot. It was probably a mistake to stay with the girls. With as often as she'd encountered the shadow people while coming into regular contact with Sylar she hoped she didn't expose the girls' new lives and location. She didn't plan on staying long, but the interview she'd had was promising and she was considering hanging around out of the possibility of a second interview.

"Think maybe he's headed to St. Louis? Anyone on the list there?" Molly asked.

Claire opened up her spreadsheet on her laptop, sorted by city, and ran her finger down the columns.

"Yep. Two people. Well, looks like I've got some phone calls to make. I wanna see pictures of that dress, girl."

"You got it. Later!"

"I can toss Micah a message, if you need a plane ticket," Claire heard a voice call from over her shoulder. She turned to see Olivia coming through the door laden with grocery bags and rose to help her.

"I guess we probably better."

~*~*~

The Clinton County Sheriff's office in Indiana had their hands full. Not only was this crime way outside the ordinary vandalism or property defacement or even an injustice committed against livestock, but the station was absolutely flat crawling with Federal suits. It was a circus. Stacey Hoffstetter had been found in a corn field in the middle of the act by her brother, who had also suffered a dislocated shoulder and a broken arm. Despite the boy's trauma, he'd seen the face of his and his sister's attacker and was currently sitting in a wooden chair trembling, either from nerves or the fact that the air conditioner was blowing far too excessively, being gently interrogated by a man in a charcoal grey suit kneeling in front him. Stacey, herself, was still in the hospital in critical condition. Aside from the myriad cuts she'd had covering her body - some depicting intricate patterns, including more than one smiley face - she'd suddenly developed a very large air embolism in one of her major arteries. There was no explanation for its sudden appearance - it was nothing short of supernatural. It had been painfully working its way through her circulatory system, and it was a miracle she'd arrived at the hospital before it reached the carotid artery leading to her brain. The bubble had been successful, sadly, in depriving some of her internal organs from their vital blood supply so that, aside from the obvious immediate threat of death, surgeons and various other hospital staff were also combating pronounced system failures in other areas of her body.

The sheriff heard the boy tell the agent in the suit, "He was a local farm hand, mama said the wind just brought him in. Everyone loved him. _Stacey_ loved him. He was staying with Mrs. Bellamy, she was rentin' a room to 'im. 'S had that house to herself ever since Mr. Bellamy died."

When asked if he could recount what exactly he'd seen, his reply was far-fetched and unbelievable... except that the sheriff knew the boy and knew he when he was lying. He wasn't.

"I could hear Stacey screamin'. I followed the sound of her voice out into the field. When I got to her... I swear to God she was floatin' in the air, all on her own, and the guy - she called 'im Bobby - was standin' in front of her, pointing and laughing. But it was more like he was swishin' his finger in the air, and she was gettin' cut. She was bleedin' all over and her right arm was turnin' blue... Anyways, he heard me run up and turned around and acted like he was gonna shove me back, but his hand never touched me. Then it was like an invisible car just ran me down. I flew through the air and everything, broke my arm. I ran back up to the house to get my..." the boy cast a nervous glance at the sheriff, who was intimately familiar with the 11 year old boy's capability with a double-barreled shotgun, "... to get my _pa_, and by the time we got back to Stacey, Bobby was gone."

"So you'd be able to give us a good description of the man then?" the agent asked.

"We should contact Mrs. Bellamy," the head detective said, leaving his spot where he was staring out the window, absorbing information from the chaos around him, to come place his hand on the sheriff's shoulder. "I'd like to run the place for prints, see if any match this guy we've been following, see if he left anything behind we can use."

"You're too late," the sheriff responded. "She's already on her way to the station. She called not too long ago wanting to report a UFO or something ridiculous, something she thinks she saw zippin' around her house. As if this day couldn't get any weirder. She's not usually prone to wild fantasy... no one around here is."

"Well, our suspect is not your normal guy. I'd be lying if I said this was the first time I've heard a wild story like this while hunting him down."

"Ya been huntin' long?"

"_Years_. The only reason we've made this much headway lately is because all of a sudden his victims've started _surviving_..." The detective joined the agent next to the boy. "Son, let me ask you this. Have you or any of your family recently come into contact with a young blonde woman who calls herself 'Claire'?"

~*~*~

Claire knew she'd been hoodwinked the instant she walked past the commotion.

"_Yes_, my husband's the pilot, _no_ he's _not_ the person flying the plane. I _swear_ I watchedhim walk into the men's room then all of a sudden the plane's in the air!" a woman was shrieking at airport security. Two men with badges had joined them, presumably air marshals. "You guys wouldn't let just _anyone_ walk on that plane, would you?!? It's a private jet!!!"

"Ma'am," began a security guard, "the man on the surveillance video is most certainly your husband -"

"Can we take this someplace more private?" one of the marshals interrupted before escorting the group away from the scene.

All of Claire's instincts were screaming. The same time she reached for her phone it rang.

"Molly!"

"Claire! He's -"

"He's not in St. Louis, is he."

"No! I just checked again to see which of the two names he'd chosen – he just showed up in Kansas City!"

Claire suppressed the urge to throw the phone. Instead she let the hand holding it drop to her side and rolled her head back to glare at the heavens.

"_Shit_!" she hissed before bringing the phone back to her ear. "Okay. Do me a favor, will ya? Call Micah and have him get me on the next plane back there. I'll call the girls. At _best_ I've got two hours before I can get back there, I just hope that's soon enough…"

"Will do."

That bastard. He _knew_ she'd see him moving to St. Louis. He knew she'd run a check, see not one but _two_ names on the list, then move to intercept him. Had she become that predictable? She dialed Olivia's number, praying she'd answer. She did – Claire had gotten lucky. After informing her of the situation all she had left to do was sit in a hard, vinyl chair in a terminal waiting area, staring at her phone, willing for it to ring carrying news of her new flight itinerary. That fucker had stolen a plane – _a whole airplane_ – and had taught himself how to fly it, figured out how it worked. She was confident there would be a whole swarm of security personnel on the ground in Kansas City waiting for him, not to mention police and probably FBI, but she also knew they would not be enough to stop him. She could only hope they'd slow him down long enough to buy her some time.

~*~*~

Sylar wasn't messing around. He was well aware that the FBI had been tailing him for years, and this newest infraction would certainly draw some attention. This was why he had no intention of ever reaching the airport. Sylar brought the plane down in the Missouri River, a lazy muddy ribbon bisecting the city. The impact took the craft to pieces, cartwheeling into the water, crashing against the rocks of the riverbed. He tucked himself into a ball and did his best to protect his head fearing that if he lost consciousness and drowned he wouldn't be revived until someone found him washed up on the shore. The cabin disintegrated around him, twisting him in a cyclone of shrapnel and debris, painfully shredding his tightly wound body before he plunged mercifully into the calm, slowly treading water. The maelstrom of groaning metal, shattering glass, and screaming engines died immediately. He relaxed and allowed the forthright current to do its job, carrying him downstream camouflaged amongst floating pieces of flotsam, until he felt he'd reached a significant distance from the scene of the crash. He lodged his slowly tumbling body against the stones of a jetty where he surfaced, took a good look around for witnesses, then climbed out. He was surprised to see the river had placed him precariously close to downtown, and oddly enough the private airport he'd tried to avoid, but he was happy he didn't have far to walk while soaking wet.

Standing outside the front door of his destination, he wondered if she'd expect him to knock. He fully intended to, after using his least favorite ability to shift his features, transforming him into the affable and safely familiar form of Craig Dalton. It felt sadistic, and not in the way he usually enjoyed, pretending to be Claire's boyfriend. He swallowed his unease and playfully gave the door a joyous little tap-tap-tap then waited to be granted entrance.

His nerves fluttered around in his belly when it took a little longer than he'd expected for Olivia to answer the door. When she did, she carried herself with the subtle appearance of someone who was hiding something. Hiding that she knew something was _wrong_. Against his better judgment he didn't let it deter him.

"Hey, what are _you_ doing here? And why are you all wet?"

"Claire called, I came to help, ran into some rain on the way - can I come in? Could use a towel," he smiled charmingly and gave a breathy chuckle. The girl gave him a skeptical eyebrow but opened the door and stepped aside for him to pass through.

Sylar's fingers began to twitch with doubt. This girl had known Craig for a while, known him longer than Claire - what if he was grossly misrepresenting the breadth of his capability? What if he got the personality wrong?

"You ran here... from New Jersey... in no time..."

"Yeah. What?"

Olivia shrugged her response as she stepped into the bathroom to retrieve a towel. When she emerged, her hand concealed within the folds of terrycloth, he knew the gig was up. Before she could take another step, Sylar froze her in place and ripped the towel from her revealing the tranquilizer gun clenched in her hand. He tenderly removed that from her possession as well.

"So, I'm guessing I need to work on my '_sensitive and supportive boyfriend_' vibe, don't I."

"Either that or don't make a habit out of showing up here soaking wet after crashing a stolen plane in the middle of a very public river... Claire called us from St. Louis, and shortly after that a friend called to tell me that traffic was all jacked up and I was _never_ gonna believe why."

Olivia laughed as she dispersed into a cloud - he could feel his hold on her dissipate like sand flowing through his fingers. Growling as he continued to grasp for her, he wasn't quick enough to dodge the wallpaper-covered arm that shot out from the wall behind him and snapped a dreaded collar around his neck. The towel and the tranquilizer gun both fell to the ground. He turned to watch Lindsay step into the room from where she'd stood concealed, her body covered in the same striped pattern as the rest of the walls.

"You also didn't use the secret knock, the one Claire said she'd use. What, just because I use my parents' house as my mailing address, you thought Olivia lived alone?"

He dropped his head and grimaced, rubbing his left eye in frustration. The unsated hunger in him was starting to grow a bit impatient, insisting on getting fed - there had been times lately where he had started to feel like his psyche was being painfully ripped in two. There had been nights, even, when he'd sat bolt upright in bed gasping and sweating, confused and lost. And here these girls stood in front of him, pulses throbbing and minds ticking like overclocked computer chips, laughing at him, mocking him with the secrets they contained that he would never know, gifts he could never have. He thirsted for the knowledge bad enough to make his throat raw, had to see how they worked... he was almost grateful when he saw Olivia sidestep to the tranquilizer gun and pick it up.

He had no witty banter left, no dazzling repertoire with which to incite any sort of reaction from the women. He'd been beaten fair and square, _again_, and he was feeling just plain pissy and sullen. He leaned into the sting when the dart punctured his chest, and almost smiled as the comforting blanket of sleep swept over him and mercifully robbed him of his consciousness.

~*~*~

Claire shouldered open the door of the hotel room she'd bartered for the evening, two scalding hot coffee cups in her hands. She placed one on the nightstand next to the bed where she had Sylar zip-tied to the headboard by his wrists. She sat in a chair across the room, blowing steam rising from her own cup, the lid having been deposited in the trash. The room was growing dark so she opened the blinds a bit, allowing bars of sunset to cross his sleeping form. He was stretched to full length, ankles crossed, his chin resting on his gently rising and falling chest. She watched him, almost sad she was about to have the conversation with him that she planned on having – he was so different when he was relaxed and his eyes were closed. _And his mouth was shut_. She didn't have to look hard to see the little boy she'd met during her trip back in time. He had the same nose and same mouth, same thick fan of long, dark lashes that brushed the soft skin under his eyes. Had the same huge, dark, sad eyes. With trepidation, she ran her hand across the file lying on the table next to the chair. It felt like high noon and she was waiting for her opponent to swagger out of the saloon.

He twitched his foot and made a small noise in his throat – he was dreaming, which meant he'd wake soon. Claire approached him, intent on speeding up the process. She thought about sticking a wet finger in his ear, but she didn't want to make him too angry just yet – she wanted him to hear what she had to say. She settled on wiggling her index finger around the velvety patch of skin between his eyebrows. After a few moments of the abuse he finally jerked his head away, scowling at her through the slits in his eyelashes.

"Morning, sunshine."

"Hmph…"

"Brought you coffee."

He sniffed a bit, scrubbing his face against his right shoulder, wringing his hands in his restraints.

"Claire..."

"Oh, sorry."

She stood, grabbing the cutters from the table where they lay next to the tool that would remove the collar from his neck, then crossed the room and freed his left hand. He pulled himself into an upright sitting position, cushioning a pillow behind his back, and groggily reached for the cup waiting on the nightstand while watching Claire return to her chair. Once she was seated he eyed the cup suspiciously. The restraints he had expected. Whips and chains he also expected, or maybe scalpels and needles. _Electroshock therapy_ would've been expected as well, perhaps waterboarding. Coffee was _unexpected_.

"It's not poisoned, stupid. In fact, it doesn't have anything in it at all. Wasn't sure how you took it so I left it black. I figured you might be a '_straight up_' kind of guy."

"I like a little sugar, actually."

"Hmm, dark and sweet, interesting," she muttered as she tossed him a couple packets. Catching the confusion on his face she continued, "Oh, dad always said you could tell a lot about a person by how they took their coffee. Guess he was wr-"

"Lemme guess, you take yours blonde and bitter."

She paused and blinked, interrupted, and did _not_ look down at her own cup - heavily creamed with no sweetener to mask the flavor of the roasted beans. She decided to change the subject. It was time to rip off the band-aid.

"You know, you asked me once 'How do we make love stay'."

Unsure where she was headed and knowing he was a captive, he tensed.

"I'm not armed," she stated, raising her arms in a gesture of good faith. "This is a conversation, not a fight."

"Claire, from you they're the same thing."

"Whatever. Do you remember asking me that?"

He did. He had been rosy-cheeked from the pinot and slightly buzzed from her proximity, having conquered her and _learned_ her, changing his brain to mimic hers and copy her ability. He wasn't sure he'd been thinking entirely straight - perhaps he'd been a tad emotionally open.

"I think I know why you asked me," she continued. He furrowed his brow in slight consternation. "I think I can _understand_." She leaned one elbow on the table, and crossed one leg over the other knee, becoming very business-like. "They say people cycle through friends every seven years - folks walk in and out of your life all the time. _Parents_ aren't supposed to though, are they. Well, they eventually die, sure, everything does, but until then they're always supposed to be there." She sized him up with a harsh stare. "They're _certainly_ not supposed to get murdered."

He returned her glare with indignance... until it changed, softened slightly. The look she gave him was no longer accusing, it was _knowing_. This wasn't about her, wasn't about _her_ parents - it was about _him_. A chill ran down his spine and his lips parted, dry. When his face grew ashen she dropped her eyes. She stood, picked up the chair, and placed it closer to the bed spinning it so the back of it faced him. She straddled it, draping her arms to hang over in front of her. She breathed a sigh.

"You know, I noticed something recently. Mortal people move very quickly." She picked at her fingernails while she spoke, a habit that was making Sylar uneasy. "They have stages to their lives that have goals which must be met and if they're not it just feels disastrous. It's amazing how different I've already become without even trying, without even _realizing_. D'you know I haven't managed to move forward and accomplish a single goal? It's weird, though, because I still _want_ to. Do you know what I'm talking about?" She suddenly seemed so sinister he didn't dare answer her and she continued to ignore his reticence. "I don't think I've been interviewing well because I've been distracted. I have an amazing boyfriend who I don't see as much as I'd like to because I've been... distracted. I don't really _live_ anyplace, I move around a _lot_, because -" she looked up to meet his eyes directly, "I've been _distracted_."

"So you're blaming _me_ because you made a conscious decision to become a pain in my ass?"

She laughed mirthlessly.

"I want you to explain '_hunger_' to me."

"This again."

"We've got all night."

"Right. Okay then, let me give you an analogy," he replied. "I'll put it in terms you can understand. I'm a cheerleader, for the _other_ team. Now we're hangin' out, getting our nails done and shit, pretending to be BFF's or whatever because eventually we're gonna talk about _cheers_ - gonna spill our guts to each other about what makes our cheers so great so that we can take that information and use it - _twist_ it - to make our own lives just a little better. Is that what's going on here? You gonna pump me for information you can use against me? Whatever _this_ is - the collar, the room, your little bondage fantasy - I think you'll find I'm pretty damn resistant to torture."

She was giggling. Was she mocking him?

"_What_."

"I'm sorry," she said, rubbing an eye, "I'm still just picturing you as a cheerleader..." She was about to dissolve into hysterics. "With the pom poms and everything…"

"Jesus Christ..." he muttered, rolling his head.

"No," she said, becoming serious again, "I want you to explain it because I want to know what it's gonna to take to _STOP_ it."

Softening her expression again, she rested her chin on the back of the chair, exuding limitless patience. Sylar waited for the shiver of falseness to creep through his body, but it never came. She was telling the truth. Did she mean it? Was she offering help? How could he possibly ask her for it? How could she possibly help him? The questions without answers chased themselves in circles in his mind and he closed his eyes in futility. The fingers in his right hand started tingling from the lack of circulation.

"Claire, you won't understand."

"I know, that's why I'm -"

"It _won't_ stop. Okay? It won't. You think I'm on some sort of crusade to prove to the world it's filled with a bunch of insufferable assholes? You think I'm trying to thin the numbers? You think I'm just trying to make myself _feel better_," he spat the words, "by punishing people for being born with gifts they don't deserve? You think I'm just angry?!?" The secret fluttered out of him like a caged bird who just noticed the door had been opened. "It's bullshit. It's _all_ bullshit. Is that what you wanna hear?!? Is that what you want?!? Tell you what, you wanna know about hunger? _Fuck_ hunger. It's more than that. It's a fucking _thirst_. You really wanna know?!? I want _you_ to go a whole day - maybe two - without drinking _anything_. Not a damn thing. Then I want you to go sit in a room full of running faucets and not touch a fucking _drop_!!! Just watch all that water run straight down the drain, all around you, just _wasted_ when it could be yours, could stop that godawful punishing _thirst_, if you'd just reach out and grab it and then _WHAM_!!!" He slammed his left hand down on the nightstand for emphasis. "Some blonde bitch shows up and beats the fuck out of you or ties you up in some damn hotel room and starts asking you questions that don't fucking mean anything and...and _then_ what?!?" He knocked his head back against the headboard. He tried rolling his body away from her and her piercing gaze, panting and upset. He pressed his face into his right shoulder. "And then you've walked a mile in my shoes. Now how do you plan to fucking stop _that_?"

After a heavy pause, willing himself to calm down, he continued. "I met my father, you know. Did you know that? Did you know we're the same, you and me? Both adopted? Did you know? Yeah, I met him. Turns out I'm just exactly like him -"

"Except _you_ actually _miss_ your mother."

He whipped around to face her, eyes wide, jaw dropped. She had just jammed her thumb into an open sore. How did she… how _could_ she know anything about that? Acute anguish was carved very plainly into his features. His shoulders were heaving and he pulled his left hand into a white-knuckled fist – Claire was happy for the collar around his neck.

"Claire…" he begged, "_don't_…"

The single word nearly disarmed her, it was so plaintive. For a split second she was staring again into the familiar face of a terrorized and heartbroken little boy. It almost yanked her off course… _almost_, but not quite. Determined, she leaned back and reached behind her, pulling the file from the table.

"You're so full of shit. You are _definitely_ angry. You know what I think '_hunger_' is? I think it's a wound that won't heal."

"Why are you asking if you've already got your mind made up?"

The only answer he received was the tapping of the file against the back of the chair.

"So, killing people. Taking abilities. You can understand how an ability works by deeply understanding the _person_, _OR_ you can just rip open their head and watch it like you're fixing a clock. You kill people out of impatience, don't you? Because of _hunger_. Or _thirst_ or whatever. Am I too far off the mark?"

Sylar turned back to his right shoulder and said nothing.

"Which brings me to my original point. How're we gonna stop this hunger? How're we gonna make it so we can leave _all_ this behind and just go on living a normal eternity?"

"We're _not_ normal," he interrupted, but she paid him no attention.

"Maybe we need to get down to the root of the cause." There was that malicious tone again, bearing a false pretense of innocence. "What do you remember about your childhood?"

He released a soft puff of laughter against his arm, one that did a poor job of disguising the oppressive sorrow that was starting to creep up the back of his throat. "You gotta be fucking kidding me."

"Do you remember her death?"

He squeezed his eyes shut and was quiet for a long time while Claire waited for his answer. He wished he was anywhere else but there, and they both knew he wasn't going to escape her.

"_Yes_," he finally whispered.

"Do you remember anything from _before_ she died?"

"_Fuck you_."

"Do you? You _don't, _do you, Gabriel?"

"_Don't_ fucking -"

"Call you that? Why? Because that's what _she_ named you? "

"Stop it."

"Because you were her _angel_?"

"_FUCK. OFF_."

She had him where she wanted him.

"You know, I didn't know Meredith well, but I did get to know some things about her," Claire flipped the file open and began to peruse its contents. "Obviously I knew her name, I knew what she looked like, I can still list the similarities between us. I know what she did for a living. I'm pretty sure her favorite color was purple and she loved horses." She stopped to look at him – he'd curled his knees up in an instinctual defensive stance as if he knew her next words were going to hurt like hell. "What was her name, Gabriel?"

"I.. I don't…"

"What was her favorite color?"

"I -"

"Did she used to sing to you at night? Did she tell you a favorite story?"

"_Stop_…"

"Can you remember what her lips felt like on your cheek? Do you remember her arms?"

"Claire, _please_… This is cruel…"

"Cruel? I'm being cruel… to _you_? Oh, I'm sorry, you're right," she patronized, "it wasn't my intention to be cruel."

She captured his attention when he heard the sound of paper scraping against the manila. When he turned to face her she held in her hand, outstretched in front of her, what appeared to be a photograph – he could only see the back of it. She glanced between the object and him several times before asking, "You can't even remember what she looked like, can you? Can you see her face?"

A slow realization crept over him – he knew what she held.

"_I SAID FUCKING STOP_!!!" he bellowed as he launched the coffee cup, narrowly missing her head, to where it exploded against the far wall, painting it with the brown liquid.

An overwhelming pressure collapsed his chest and he suddenly found he couldn't breathe. His vision blurred and he made no attempt to hide the glistening line of tears that filled his eyes. He swallowed the tight knot in his throat and stared blearily at the photograph in her hand, perhaps in the vain hope that she might surrender it though in his mind he knew she would never give up such a powerful bargaining chip. If she was content to dangle his innermost desperate and secret wish in front of him like a carrot on a stick only to deny him, _taunt_ him, she _wanted_ something. She tucked the photograph away and leaned back to replace the file on the table, then turned to look at him in time to watch his eyes follow the folder with unmasked longing, his body pulling against his still-restrained right wrist. Crestfallen, he let his face drop and gravity pulled a tear over the bridge of his nose to where it splashed wetly on the mattress.

The second tear, slowly plotting its steadily falling course across his left cheek, transformed him one last time, presenting Claire with the illusion of a child who couldn't understand why someone would want to hurt him. Wringing one hand over the back of her neck, she marveled over how she _should_ feel like a knight who'd slain a dragon… and yet somehow ended up feeling like she'd savagely beat a dog for being vicious when it was all it ever knew how to be. She stood, pushed the chair away, and knelt before him.

"I'm sorry, okay? I'm sorry. I _am_." She _was_. "I needed to get through to you."

In an extremely unusual display of affection, one that didn't make any sense to either of them (but that didn't manage to stop her), she took his left hand in hers. It was warm and soft and gentle and completely terrified him. He froze. With captivating tenderness, she brought her right hand to his face and used her small thumb to arrest the meandering tear in its tracks. He flushed and ripped his face away from her touch, ashamed of his weakness and embarrassed by his inability to discard it through some sort of flippant remark or smoldering stare. He made an attempt at cold, harsh laughter. Seeing through him, Claire curled a finger around his chin and slowly brought him around to face her again.

He wanted her hands off of him. He wanted the damned _collar_ off him. He wanted to pin her against the wall hard enough to crack her ribs and he wanted to rip her apart, piece by piece. He wanted to coat the walls with her blood and smear her organs into the bland, stereotypically beige hotel carpet. He shook with rage and the look he returned to her was seethingly murderous. Sylar locked Gabriel down, way down deep, then stole his left hand from hers to clamp it around her throat _hard_. He pulled her close enough that she could feel his breath hot on her cheek.

"What do you want."

She didn't struggle and her gaze never faltered – she maintained an unnervingly tranquil disposition, like a mother handling a toddler in the middle of a violent tantrum. He _hated_ it.

"I think I've made it pretty clear what I want. I want you to stop killing people."

"What, so you can go on leading your perfectly partitioned little life? So you can have _goals_ or whatever? So you can't be bothered with the likes of _ME_ anymore?"

He threw her away and she stumbled backwards before catching herself on the table. She stood and regained her composure.

"I think I've made it pretty damn clear it isn't that simple," he hissed.

"Alright," she said, "then I'll make it _this_ simple: I will _give_ you this file. I will set aside," she sliced her hand through the air, "all the anger and the hurt I carry with me every day over what you did to my mother and my father and I will give it to you. I will freely hand over to you the same thing you stole from me – _I will give you back your mother_ – on the promise that you will stop killing people. "

Closing his eyes, weary and looking for any way to back out of the conversation, he leaned his head back against the headboard and held his fierce tongue. Somehow, in the process of convincing himself that she knew absolutely nothing about him, he'd ended up baring his soul to her. He knew he was only angry because there wasn't another living thing in the universe that could touch him where she had or know him the way she did. He hated himself for wanting to feel comforted by that fact, or for wanting to give in to her demands, however briefly. It was bitterly ironic that his association with her – the cheerleader he had met so many years before who had enticed him with the prospect of everlasting invincibility – could in turn be coupled with such crippling _vulnerability_. She held his heart in her hand, she knew it, and there was nothing he could do to save it. The emptiness and insatiability that ruled him didn't exactly come with an off switch. Twice he tried to form a response but the words just wouldn't come.

"Hell, sleep on it," Claire said, snatching the file from the table and clutching it to her chest. "Take as long as you want. The offer's on the table and I'm not taking it back. It stands and it'll keep on standing, kay?"

She picked up the tools from the table and turned toward the door. Opening it, she paused.

"You know, it's a shame you've got that hang-up and all. Gabriel's a _really_ pretty name."

She tossed the cutters onto the bed, dropped the tool for the collar in the doorway, and ran.

Night fell and darkness descended upon the room. Sylar cut himself free, removed the collar, and shut the front door. Unable to make any sense of the turmoil hurtling through his insides, he decided the rest of his evening would probably be better off spent alone, and _not_ chasing that bitch down to make sidewalk art with the contents of her circulatory system. He splashed some cold water on his face, then stripped down to his boxers and climbed back into the bed. He pulled the coverlet over his head, creating a comfortable cocoon of bedding around his body, then willed himself to fall into a fitful sleep. Perhaps he could convince himself this had all been some sort of freakish nightmare induced by the tranquilizer dart.

Meanwhile Claire drove as fast as she dared through the city, praying she remembered how to get back to the girls' house, unsure of what action Sylar would take in response to their somewhat impassioned confrontation. She suspected he might seek retribution, and he was a force to be reckoned with without that collar. Regrouping with the girls was her first priority.

Images flooded her mind as she drove. She giggled as she remembered the three of them grappling with his heavy, unconscious form to stuff him into the car before she drove him to the hotel – how she'd managed to get him from the car to the bed by herself was still a mystery. She recalled his mother's picture as she'd held it in her hand – when she'd first seen it in her father's bunker she'd been amazed to discover how much Sylar looked like her. She was a raven-haired, dark eyed beauty, tall and slender like him with a graceful, dimpled smile and was filled with an obvious abundance of love. She then went on to remember her first encounter with her own biological mother. She'd had the joy of conversation with the woman, to know the circumstances of her birth and to know the reasons why she'd been given up. She'd not only been blessed with the opportunity to kindle a relationship with Meredith, but had also the fortune of being raised by a foster mother who was the infallible pinnacle of strength and human spirit known as Sandra Bennett. Sylar, on the other hand, had absolutely no idea how much his mother had loved him, her memory having been totally erased when a group of conscious and rational adults came together and carried out a plot that took a little boy and completely destroyed him. Then finally, she remembered how badly she wanted him dead after he'd cut her open and climbed inside her, taking her ability and robbing from her the facility to feel pain. She'd watched him burn on that beach and had felt so unfulfilled, as if the death he'd received wasn't near enough because she hadn't been the one to deliver it. More than that, it wasn't the death itself she'd wanted to witness – it was the pain. She wanted to _hurt_ him. Had even said as much once – aloud. And now she _had_. And she took no satisfaction from it.

She propped her elbow up near the window and dragged her fingers across her forehead, recoiling from the memory of the moisture against his face. Somehow in the process of trying to hurt him she'd ended up wanting to heal him.

~*~*~

"You seem a million miles away," Craig's voice pulled her back to reality. She pulled another tuft of cotton candy into her mouth and let it fizzle on her tongue.

She'd gotten a call from one of the companies in New York with whom she'd interviewed. They had been impressed with her and had an entry level position for which they thought she would be a good fit. They wanted to see her for a second interview. Not only did this mean her life was closer to moving forward in a far more positive direction, it also afforded her a lot of extra time in the company of this warm, handsome, brilliant man who currently had her hand cradled in the crook of his elbow as he chivalrously escorted her to his favorite haunts on the infamous Coney Island boardwalk.

"You know, as hard as I try not to get my hopes up," she began, "my head is just buzzing." She stopped them and turned to face him, a bit of pink fuzz resting on her nose. "I really want this."

He cupped her face and kissed away the leftover sugary sweetness. "Regardless of what happens, it doesn't change _us_. Nothing's gonna happen here."

"But what if I _don't_ get the job? What if I end up getting the one in _Seattle_? You don't think that'll change things?"

"I'd follow you anywhere, honey-head. I do research and development for pharmaceutical companies, one of _the_ most prolific industries in the nation. And, I know how to do a _lot_ of other things. I hold two masters degrees, for pete's sake. I shudder to think I couldn't get another job. I got this one after Yuma, right?"

"I hope you mean that, it's a big thing to say."

"Well, you're a pretty big little thing."

She ran her hands along the backs of his strong arms. "How did I ever find you?"

"I hope you haven't forgotten _that_ because it's a really interesting story for our grandkids."

This earned him a blushing giggle. She was suddenly ready to get him home and naked.

"Grandkids, huh? Sounds like you've got this all planned out," she beamed up at him.

His eyes were deep black pools as his gaze turned more serious. "Maybe I do." He tucked a hand into her hair, and she leaned into his touch. "Maybe… I'd like to consider making this more… permanent."

She pressed her body against his, gazing up at him with her chin on his chest. "I really hate that we're in public and you have clothes on."

She felt his rumbling laughter vibrate against her throat.

"Maybe we could talk more about it over breakfast," he whispered against her lips before he kissed her.

She dropped her cotton candy. For the first time in a long while she forgot Sylar ever existed.

**A/N #2: Whew!!!! So anyhoo, yay Kansas City! For those who don't know, KC has 3 roasteries downtown: The Roasterie (also termed the Kansas City Roasterie), Parisi, and Folgers. That's right, folks - chances are if you live in the midwest that can of Folgers you have in your kitchen came from downtown KC. So, it's very true - drive around downtown or in the west bottoms by the river and it'll very likely smell like coffee. Either that or... something really bad because the train yards are over there too and, well, it's a river. There is an airport down there too =D**


	10. Stealing Things

**A/N: Wheee a long chapter!!!! This one was more fun to write. Have I mentioned before that I love writing Noah Bennett? I might've, but it needed to be said again for emphasis. His time is too short, but fun nonetheless. Anyhoo**, **this chapter is all about chaos - let it ensue!!!!**

**I don't own Heroes or anything remotely related and I bow humbly before the television gods, please have mercy on me. Rated "M" for language, some violence, some blood & guts, and eventually some sexual imagery. And please review! If I've massively screwed something up, I'd like to know =D**

**10) Stealing Things**

_*** some time later ***_

Noah Bennett rued the day he ever adopted a girl. Despite the initial implications surrounding the events that had left her "orphaned", taking the sweet, fuzzy, pink little bundle into his arms had been easy. More than easy, it had felt almost predestined - it was _right_. Her youth had been a joyous toy box of My Little Ponies and Malibu Barbies and fashion shows with cardboard box runways and teddy bear audiences. He could close his eyes and still taste the pretend-tea trickling down his throat, slipping around the aching knot of nostalgia. Her teenage years, while providing him with an education he wasn't sure he really wanted, had changed them both and brought them closer simultaneously, and while they were hard they were nothing he'd ever trade. But as he stood and gaped at the pile of receipts in his hands - happy little pieces of glossy paper with happy little logos and happy little "Have a Nice Day"'s and happy little evil freakin' dollar signs - he absolutely loathed himself for ever thinking it would be a good idea to adopt a _woman_. Nothing on Earth could be so gut wrenchingly heinous as paying _this_ much money... just to say goodbye to her.

"Honey!" he called to Sandra, who was in the kitchen preparing homemade butter cream molded mints. "What's an 'Ikebana' and why do we have one?" He wasn't even sure he pronounced it correctly. Sandra ignored the question - he suspected he didn't really want to know the answer anyway - and scuttled into the room to shove a spoon in his face.

"Taste this, what do you think?"

It was heavenly. He could've eaten the whole bowl if their current financial situation hadn't already robbed him of his appetite.

"Tastes expensive," he murmured.

"Oh Noah," she groaned, landing the kind of kiss on his forehead that would cure all ill before making her way back to her task.

It wasn't the cost of the wedding that was really bothering him, though. Craig's parents were lovely people and the last time they'd all sat down to dinner together they'd worked out a truly harmonious budget balanced between them. The open checkbook ledger before him - he was on his 4th run-through - was meant to be a distraction from the real concern. He distinctly remembered Claire recounting a tale of mechanized flying chasers, seemingly invincible, performing the jobs of black-suited men. It wasn't hard to imagine that, at a rather sybaritic and public social gathering that included a somewhat large concentration of people with highly sought after abilities, they wouldn't make an appearance. He'd tried to convince Claire that a wedding was a bad idea but when dinner with the Daltons had occurred he'd discovered that Sandra and Mrs. Connie Dalton had other plans that didn't include paying much credence to his opinions. He knew that, inside, his daughter secretly wished for the wedding - like anything else that made her feel ordinary - regardless of the fact she'd agreed with him. She had even made mention to Sandra that she thought a small, private ceremony on the beach would be... charming, had she called it? The hint had been ignored, however, and Claire didn't push the issue too awful hard.

Therefore, Noah resolved to consider his contribution, aside from a large portion of the financials, a vastly improved line of defense over what was traditionally considered for a big church wedding in Texas. Closing the checkbook he retreated to his study where he pulled out the detailed notes he'd made the last time he'd visited the church. He reviewed the locations of the exits, the allowed population capacity per the fire code, the distance in meters from the middle of the room to the nearest exit, the number of windows and the types of panes that comprised them, the presence of underground chambers, the distance – again, in meters – from the exits to the highway, how long it would take to reach help from the outside world, and so on. He felt fortunate that if the wedding was going to take place at _all_ it was going to be in Texas where it wasn't so unusual (in fact, it was downright socially acceptable) to see a significant number of shotguns in a church.

~*~*~

The head detective was staring out of his Washington D.C. window taking a mental inventory of evidence on a case when a knock captured his attention. It was a clerk from the mailroom downstairs delivering an important package. As he ducked out of the office to continue his appointed rounds the detective retrieved the large tan envelope from his inbox. He peeled it open and inspected its contents - DNA evidence from the crime scene in Albany, NY. At _last_.

As he'd suspected the perpetrator had in fact been positively identified as Gabriel Grey, who operated under the known alias "Sylar". There had been too much blood on the walls to refute the accusation that he'd been anyone else. But there _had_ been someone else - the victim, Brandy Harris, had called her Claire, as had Dominic Jones in Boston. He believed this enigmatic "Claire" was a vigilante and now he would have a face, surname, prints, and a record to go with that nom de guerre.

Her name was Claire Bennett (although she, too, had briefly used an assumed last name in high school - something the detective found to be highly suspicious of her character) and she was a recent graduate of a midwestern university. Her last mailing address was listed as a rural home outside of Odessa, TX – presumably her parents'. He decided it might be worthwhile to pay them a visit to make an inquiry regarding her whereabouts. It seemed that if he could find _her_, he could find Sylar. He also decided it would be a good idea to assemble a team and contact the local authorities in Odessa - too many times her trail had been painted in blood; it was best to consider her dangerous regardless of her innocent if not truly ordinary detail.

While filing the documents with the rest of the paperwork on the case he removed two objects to have another look - a photograph and a handwritten note, both of which he'd created. The photo depicted an area on the wall where the blood had been smeared. Since the bloody posts didn't _quite_ line up with the window that had provided the suspects' escape he didn't believe the smear had been made in that process. Also, forensics had found that the gooey, gelatinous quality of the smear determined that it had been made some time after the blood had started to dry – the smear occurred later, after the crime, after the escape. The smear was _unexplainable_, but did manage to tell him one thing – someone had tampered with his crime scene, before they had arrived to investigate it.

It appeared he wasn't the only one searching for Sylar.

~*~*~

It was an absolutely stunning day. The sky was putting forward its finest azure face having been wiped clean of any lingering clouds. Birdsong was jubilant in the air and the lavish flower arrangements decorating the grounds were enshrouding the area with a heady pleasant aroma. Claire had insisted that, regardless of the fact the ceremony was taking place at a church, the event would be conducted outdoors on the church lawn. The weather was just too dang nice this time of year to be cooped up indoors.

She was standing in front of a cathedral-style window that stretched from the floor to the ceiling in a room upstairs devoted to bible study. Her entire not-inconsiderable beauty routine having been completed, she warmed herself in the sun and took a few moments of quiet calm to dissuade any second thoughts. She watched the busy lawn as the caterers arrived, filing their gilded trays in through the double doors of the church, and on a dais off to the side of the congregation a small orchestra (compliments of Angela Petrelli's estate) was warming up. Some guests had arrived early and were milling around socializing. The general atmosphere was soaked with contentment – nothing could spoil this perfect day.

Taking a few steps to her right to get a better view of the growing crowd and letting her fingers stray absentmindedly to touch a nearby table, she bumped her freshly manicured nails into the objects that were resting on its surface. Smiling with recognition, she picked up the old book of poetry she'd received from her father earlier – pretty things he said would help keep the spark alive. She thumbed through it without absorbing any words then set it down next to the little box that had once held sapphire earrings from her brother – the ones that currently adorned her earlobes. "Something new" had been from her mother and was hanging from her neck – a locket intended to carry memories with her forever. Heh, _forever_. Sandra had always been so insightful. A bridesmaid – a close friend she'd made in college – claimed to have something borrowed. She suspected it was a pair of sexy boots she hadn't seen since a night out with the girls several years ago, but before she could discover the nature of the gift the girl had run off with Molly, her maid of honor, to help Sandra wrestle the cake out of the delivery vehicle. She hoped they were gentle.

She had slipped into her dress – a strapless gown with a long, gathered skirt that reminded her of thunderheads billowing before a storm – and was clutching it around her breasts while she waited for her mother to finish rescuing the towered confection and come help her fasten it. As if on cue, Sandra stepped through the door.

"That was quick – thought the cake would be an ordeal."

"Well, it's under control. Need some help with that?"

"Would _love_ some."

"You know, this is a mother's dream come true," Sandra cooed, lovingly lifting Claire's hair and draping it over her shoulder. She began to lace the ribbons up the back… a little too tight. "I'm gonna try not to cry."

The smile fell from Claire's face as she felt herself immobilize, frozen in place.

Sandra strode to the table near the window.

"Let's see… something old for sure," she picked up the book then set it down, "and a little box… something new or something blue? Or both? You don't have anything borrowed yet?"

"I'm currently borrowing a sense of humor," she grunted through gritted teeth.

Head tilted slightly, Sandra breathed a small laugh that wasn't quite _her _beforeshe returned to her original position behind her daughter, letting her form change into the smirking visage of a smugly celebrating Sylar. He smoothed his hands down her sides as he leaned a cheek against her head – she could feel his breath tickle her left shoulder.

"I didn't get an invitation, Claire."

"Couldn't imagine why…"

"I have something for you. Something _borrowed_." She felt a collar – the same one she'd left with him after their last meeting – snap around her neck. The conversation they'd had at the time had turned out less than pleasant for him – for the first time in a long while she was truly frightened of what he might do.

"Look, you can do whatever you want to me, but if one drop of blood gets on this dress I _swear_ -"

The ribbon yanked itself free and her dress fell to the floor around her ankles. Claire flew from where she stood to become plastered against the far wall. Sylar closed the distance between them, presumably to gloat, but quickly glanced away and swallowed thickly. It was too much to hope for that she wouldn't notice.

"Oh my god, are you serious? _Seriously_? You choose _now_ to get all timid about a topless girl?"

He met her eyes and frowned darkly. He really hated her sometimes. "You saw mine in a missile silo in Podunk, Oklahoma – it's only fair I see yours… in a church no less," he said while using a finger to cut a small slice just beneath her left collarbone, one that didn't heal and stung deliciously.

Claire couldn't help herself. She closed her eyes, parted her lips, and let escape a small sigh of ecstasy, her nipples incapable of hiding her reaction. Sylar fought the feverish and involuntary flare of arousal, jerking back his hand. He'd forgotten how badly she craved pain, like a recovering alcoholic craves whiskey. The part of him that was intent on her suffering wanted to stop and brainstorm a different method, but the typical man in him wanted to see if he could get her off before she walked down the aisle to meet her husband-to-be. Who was he kidding. The "Gabriel" in him truly _was_ timid around half-naked girls – for all his fearsome bravado he spent most of his life locked in a shell that had left him somewhat… inexperienced. Rather than draw attention to that fact, he withdrew.

"You're making a huge mis-"

He was interrupted when the door crept open, admitting entrance to the real Sandra who screamed immediately at the sight of her topless and bleeding daughter telekinetically pinned in place by her family's greatest mortal enemy. Sylar dropped his head into his hand and slammed the door shut behind Sandra before flinging her against it.

"This is_ not _what it looks like," he groaned. "You see, yer daughter -"

A phone started ringing. He cleared his throat. He continued.

"Your _daughter_…"

It kept ringing. Claire and Sandra glanced at each other. Sylar pinched his nose in irritation.

"Oh, for shit's sake, gimme the damn phone!"

He allowed Sandra the use of one arm which she jammed into a pocket, retrieving her silver flip phone. It's shrill singing stopped when it zipped through the air to land in the palm of Sylar's hand where he snapped it open with an annoyed flick. Using his shapeshifting ability to mimic Sandra's voice, he answered.

"Noah? Mmmhmm? Yes, I see. Well, she _can't_ come down to visit with them, Noah, she's not _decent_."

"What's going on?" Claire called from over his shoulder. A finger silenced her.

"Have you tried explaining to them that this is a _wedding_? They're just gonna have to wait. Yes, I realize that. Well, lemme get her _dressed_ then I'll come down and get them. I'll be down in a minute, bye."

He approached Sandra and slipped the phone back in her pocket.

"Mrs. Bennett, the FBI have showed up hoping to apprehend your daughter for questioning, I assume with regard to her association with _me_ and the crime scenes we've been creating."

"_We_?!?"

He placed a hand on Sandra's shoulder. "What I need you to do is lace up your daughter's dress then go down there and _stall them_. I'm trusting you'll do this because I don't think you want them snatching her up on her wedding day any more than _I_ do."

Sandra's face was lined with angry dignity as she nodded her acquiescence. Sylar released his hold on both the women but remained by the door to prevent any comings or goings – accidental or otherwise. Justifying his cause, there was a turn of the doorknob followed by a meek knock. Molly.

"Claire? We're back – can you let us in?"

"Give us a bit, Molly," Sandra announced, forcing the nervous waver out of her voice, scowling at Sylar as she spoke, "she's naked in here, gettin' her dressed. We'll be done in a minute." Sylar rewarded her with a menacing chuckle.

Claire pulled the gown back over her body while her mother fished in her purse for a tissue.

"Mrs. Bennett -"

"We are _NOT _getting blood on this dress." Claire agreed with her mother's retort by flashing him a stern glare.

"Whatever, just hurry up."

After Sandra had dabbed the red mess clean she handed Claire a wad of tissues with instructions to put pressure on the wound until it stopped bleeding. She noticed, for the first time, that above the chain of her daughter's new locket sat a different object – what appeared to be a collar. It had small lights that blinked as if it were performing a task. She reached to curiously graze a hand over it.

"Don't touch that. Mrs. Bennett, I don't wanna break your fingers. They won't heal quite like hers would."

"_Leave her_ _alone_," Claire warned. "We both know this is between you and me."

"It was until _she_ walked in. Now it's between you and me and _her_."

"You made a _promise_."

He rolled his eyes.

"I know…"

Sandra didn't ask what she meant by that. She hastily stepped behind her daughter and laced up the back of her dress. When she was finished, she turned to Sylar, raised her hands in surrender, and said, "I'm ready." He moved aside, swung the door open and chivalrously bowed toward her exit, then allowed her to gracefully slip from the room.

"She's going to tell the police you're up here," Claire said once she was gone. She had pressed her face up against the window to see a full cadre of armed and uniformed officers of various jurisdictions prowling the grounds below. Closing her eyes, she ran a hand down the glass. "I can't believe this is happening, I just wanted _one freakin' day_. But _NO_. No way. My _wedding_," she turned to look at him when she enunciated the word, "has just _got_ to be crashed… by the flippin' FBI of all things. And _you_."

"_And_ me. You know I have no intention of being here when they arrive," he stated as he yanked her about by the elbow, shoved his left shoulder into her stomach, and lifted her high.

"_WHAT THE FU_ -"

He telekinetically shut down her vocal chords as he shifted her weight and his features rippled into the form of Craig Dalton.

"Hush, now – you're not getting kidnapped, you're just getting _eloped_," he teased as he made a run for it.

~*~*~

Five miles down the road from Caprock Baptist Church sat two large white vans. The black-suited gentlemen who occupied them finally emerged after a long interval of inactivity. The signal had been given. They opened the rear doors of both vehicles to allow what appeared to be roughly two dozen toy spacecraft to hover free, humming as they lined up to receive their programming. Their four shadowy caretakers moved amongst them with handheld devices that hooked up to and provided the machines the capability to synchronize with the satellite in orbit.

Miles above the ground a severe-looking blonde woman, who answered to the name Dr. Judy Rogers, inspected lines of code over the shoulder of a white-coated assistant. It wasn't every day that a large concentration of names on her list showed up in the same location – one that auspiciously happened to be in the middle of nowhere – and one of those names happened to belong to the individual she considered to be the key to her whole operation.

She straightened, happy with the orders that were being directed to her drones. She hoped their number was sufficient – their manufacture was slow and costly, and the rogue drone Sylar had unleashed upon her last prototypes had decimated some of her already conservative numbers. The loss of machines, however, was still preferable to the loss of more men.

She laid her hand on the assistant's shoulder who looked up at her, waiting for further instruction. Dr. Rogers merely nodded – it was time to begin. The assistant relayed the information to the men in the white vans on the ground who then returned to their vehicles and allowed the drones to commence their assault.

~*~*~

Noah could tell by the way Sandra was walking a bit too quickly, with strides that were larger than she normally took, that she was stressed. Her brow was furrowed, her fists were clenched, her chest was heaving. Either she was _really_ angry at the FBI, or something was wrong. The agents accompanying him turned at her approach.

"It's not my daughter you're after, it's Sylar," she panted. "He's got her upstairs, I suggest you hurry."

"That can't be," said Lyle as he joined them after having escorted a pair of guests to their seats. "I just saw Craig take off with her, thought they were headed down to the creek to fool around before pictures."

"I did what?" Craig asked as he joined them from behind, sipping a glass of lemonade.

As they stood staring at each other, a strange low hum started to cross the lawn.

~*~*~

They'd reached a creek and he'd set her down by a tree. She was frozen in place on her feet, but her eyes followed him, lasers burning holes into his flesh. She reminded him of a hornet's nest trapped in a jar. Not to be one to claim he never took his punishment, he released his hold on her voice.

"Sylar, I really really _really_ hope you've drug me all the way out here to tell me you're reconsidering my offer."

He grimaced. To hide his reticence, he turned from her, picked up a stone, and skipped it across the water.

"I'm afraid we're at an impasse on that one, Claire. I'm here to keep you from making a huge mistake."

"A _mistake_? You think marrying the man I love and moving on with my life is a _mistake_? To say something's not right with you has always been an understatement, but this time it's sunk to an all _new_ low…"

"You're _immortal_, Claire -"

"Yeah, I picked up on that -"

"- and he's _not_. Mortals don't understand us. You even told me yourself, and I quote, 'they move quickly.' We don't. We don't move at _all_. You think you're moving on? Where will you be when he's gone? Right back where you were. He won't _understand_ that."

"You know what? I get it. I know what this is all about. You're still pissed because I made you cry."

His shoulders reached his ears and he wanted to close off her throat again… with his fist.

"_Oh for crying out fucking loud_," he growled, "no, no I'm _not_ mad – and can we not talk about that by the way? _Ever_? No. Mortals, they move forward, they get _over_ things." He turned to face her. "We don't. When everyone and everything starts to die around you, Claire, if you start letting go of things, what will you have left? Mortals, like _him_, they're defined by their future, where they're going, but we're defined by where we've _been_. We are the sum of our past. Fifty years from now when he looks like he's bangin' his great-granddaughter he's not gonna get that."

"Why do you care? That's not a reason to crash my wedding and kidnap me. I know you too well to believe for_ one second_ you're out here saving me from _myself_ or whatever out of the kindness of your own twisted freakin' heart. You are _definitely _pissed at me and you _definitely_ wanna see me suffer, so let's just get on with it already and -"

She was interrupted by the sounds of screams and gunshots from over the hill. In three giant strides Sylar was next to her, a hand tentatively resting on her left elbow. More shots were fired and their eyes met.

"What the hell's going on back there? Oh my God, Craig! Sylar, I have to get back!"

"Like hell you are! You don't want any _blood_ on this dress, remember?!?" he sneered.

"I can't just leave him there!!!"

"And what exactly do you think you're gonna do for him?!?" She had no answer for that.

"What on earth would make the FBI just open fire at a wedd -"

The hand he held up silenced her. A familiar buzzing hum crept to their ears. They both paled. There were _flying machines_. _ Flying machines_ were terrorizing her guests, the authorities were spraying the church lawn with bullets, and the bride had been kidnapped by a super-powered serial killer. What a complete cluster.

"Claire, your dress is gonna get dirty."

She was gasping with a mixture of anger and fright. "I'm not armed…"

"It won't matter, remember? And we can't exactly get underground. I can stall them but you've got to run."

"What about you? I can't let them get you."

He stared at her, agape, eyes wide with disbelief and confusion. "You, uh," he suddenly felt very weird, "you don't have to worry -"

"If they get you and figure out how your ability works it'll doom the rest of us. More than that, I really think these people can screw up the world."

"Right…"

"It kills me to admit it so it must be true. Right now you might be the most important person on earth. You need protection _way_ more than I do so you might as well come with me."

He stared at his feet and raked a hand through his hair, allowing her to move her body.

"Gimme your shirt," she demanded.

"Huh?"

She had already kicked off her shoes and was pulling at the lacings behind her in a manner which made him cringe with discomfort.

"This thing will only slow me down."

Understanding, he stripped out of the shirt and turned from her, handing it behind him, allowing her some modesty as she stepped away from the pile of white fabric on the ground. She shook her head at him as she accepted the t-shirt.

"You kill me, you know that?"

"Claire, I could spend hours dissecting the irony of that statement."

Scowling as she pulled the garment over her head, she took a moment to appreciate the smooth musculature of his back and shoulders and noticed a scar, low and close to his spine. Apparently getting impaled by a Japanese sword had left a mark. Feeling not quite decent in nothing but a t-shirt and her underwear, she tapped at his elbow.

"Let's go."

~*~*~

"Slow down, Lurch," Claire called, "yer legs are twice the length of mine and I don't have any shoes! These rocks are freakin' killer…" She windmilled her arms to keep her balance as she stepped on something that moved.

"Didn't think it'd take you long to remember pain isn't exactly _orgasmic_," he tossed over his shoulder as he sloshed down the creek bed. His reply earned him a mud pie between the shoulder blades.

"_Slow down_!"

He stopped. "Claire, may I remind you – oh _shit_! Quick – this way!!!"

"What?!?"

He didn't take the time to answer her. He reached back and snatched her hand, yanking her forward and almost toppling her face-first into the water.

"What the hell!"

"_Be quiet_!"

He dragged her painfully up an embankment into some brush. He clutched her close to him, breathing hard, while the branches around her tugged at her hair and dug into her skin. She watched a small cut on his shoulder slowly disappear. All the hours spent on her hair and her makeup and her nails…

"_What's going on_?" she whispered.

"Shhh…"

She heard the baleful hum shortly before she saw its hull gleam alarmingly in the sunlight as it crossed into the air above the creek bed. It paused, scanned the area, and moved off.

"It's gone."

"It'll be back. They're tracking us on spectral analysis. Because we're genetically different from normal humans our composition turns up different results when we're analyzed – it's the same technology they use to discover other planets that have water."

"That's great, but -"

"I know the signal they're receiving from the satellite has trouble penetrating underground, but I also suspect they don't perform well in dark conditions"

"Like, how dark?"

"Like _that_ dark." He pointed downstream to a small cave mouth in the embankment. "Technically, it's also underground."

"You think we can make it there without getting noticed?"

"It's a better gamble than trying to make it out here on open ground."

Claire eased out of the brush behind him, sliding down the embankment on her behind. When her feet touched the water she felt the air crackle around her. Sylar was walking slowly and turning wide circles, his fingertips splayed before him throwing sparks, and his eyes scouring their surroundings for movement.

"You're gonna electrocute _both_ of us," she groaned and rolled her eyes.

"No I'm not."

"Yeah, okay, just _me _then. You know we tried lightning _last_ time…"

"I know, but I'm hoping my reflexes'll be fast enough to -"

Claire felt a puff like a moth against her cheek. Sylar darted out a hand and a big blue flare like a giant bug zapper threw shrapnel in all directions.

"What the hell was th-"

"_Run_!"

An invisible force pushed her forwards. She lost her footing on the slippery rocks but somehow managed to propel herself onward. She could hear Sylar's heavy booted footsteps splashing behind her as well as the dim whirring of the small craft's turbines holding it aloft as it pushed turbulent ripples across the water. It was closing fast. She heard a grunt and turned, her hair whipping out of her eyes in time to see Sylar crash to one knee, a dart sticking out of the back of his left thigh.

"Keep going!!!" he yelled. They were so close. She did the only thing she could think of – she took up a large scoop of water and flung it at Sylar and the flying machine. Part of her hoped that the cold water would shock him, help keep him awake until they reached the cave mouth. While she was temporarily successful, the drone also stalled in its trajectory and faltered to its left in what appeared to be momentary confusion. Apparently the water, with its ability to refract light (not to mention stream water also had a nasty habit of carrying loads of sticky particulates) had managed to fool its sensors. Wasting no time, Claire dug her fingernails into Sylar's arm and dragged him after her, pulling with every ounce of strength she had in her slight frame to get him past the opening in the earth, and tucked back into the damp musty darkness.

Panting and cold, she did everything she could not to think about the spiders and snakes that were very likely occupying her space. She curled up and watched as the drone hovered just outside the cave, its mechanical eye unable to penetrate the darkness and it dared not enter – it had lost them. Even though she knew it didn't have ears, she stilled her breath, swallowed several times, and kept as quiet as she could. Once the machine moved on, the only thing she could hear was Sylar breathing, curled up and asleep face down in the mud. Knowing the thing would continue to search the area and that it very likely wasn't alone, she settled in for a long wait.

~*~*~

The smothering darkness of the cave had somehow grown gradually thicker and more suffocating – Claire suspected the sun was setting outside. What was happening back at the church? Did the black-suits capture anyone? Did anyone get shot? Did Craig belong to either of those categories? She did her best to picture him zipping through the craggy Texas wilderness at top speed looking for her – never tiring, never stopping. That was the Craig she knew. The image of him as she'd first met him, however – in a sickeningly sterile white holding cell irradiated in false light - wouldn't leave her. They'd caught him once… She needed a distraction. She nudged Sylar's head with her toe – why wouldn't he wake up? She nudged a little harder.

Horrendous childhood trauma notwithstanding, this man had crashed her _wedding_. He'd collared her, stripped her, cut her, and had every intention of torturing her out of revenge for making him feel things he didn't want to. He wanted _her_ to feel just as miserable as he had. And _then_, his next intention was to forcibly remove her out of some selfish and twisted sense of propriety – and he _wasn't_ taking no for an answer. Like a child stealing back his favorite toy. Beyond that, this man had killed family and friends and countless other strangers that had the potential to be either one. If he didn't adhere to his perverted sense of integrity and honor so strictly she knew that there were several others who'd also be dead right now. Perhaps he needed a bit more than a toe nudge.

She _thwapped_ him on the head with her knuckles. Unsuccessful, she slapped him across his cheek open-handedly. Rubbing the sting out of her palm while he did nothing more than twitch, she decided to try the one thing she knew all men universally hated. She angled her body for more proper leverage and sunk her foot deep into his groin. _That_ got his attention. He recoiled immediately, bowing his spine and drawing in on himself, coughing to the point she thought he might throw up. She didn't care, awake or not, she was on a roll. She was a flurry of fists, landing them across his ribs and shoulders, a couple to the kidneys, and a couple _really_ good ones to the back of his head – ones that popped her knuckles and made them bleed.

"YOU ASSHOLE!!! YOU KIDNAPPED ME FROM MY OWN DAMN WEDDING!!! DO YOU KNOW WHAT IT TOOK JUST TO PUT ALL THAT TOGETHER?!?!?!"

This time she _wasn't_ surprised as she was slammed against the earthen wall of the cave. He didn't say anything to her immediately, just rocked on his elbows and knees, gasping with his eyes squeezed tightly shut. She barked a harsh laugh of victory.

"I just think it's funny how you're always coming to torture me and somehow _you're_ the one who always ends up hurt."

He glared up at her, rising to his knees while he pushed himself to meet her. He placed a hand on either side of her head and leaned in close, eyes brandishing their own light in the darkness – they were furious.

"Says the girl in the _collar_," he leered. Claire shrieked as the skin above her eyebrows started to peel away, trickling warm, sticky blood into her eyes. "Maybe I ought to have a second look in there, figure out how you did away with all that pesky _pain_."

"It's not worth it!" she yelped. "Only feel… half alive.."

"Says _you_…"

She screamed with agony and began to pale. Her eyes rolled back, and this time not out of condescension. Soon she'd lose consciousness, either from shock or blood loss. And then she'd be _gone_. He'd be _alone_.

"You can't keep doing this forever," she hissed through clenched teeth. "_What's it all for_?"

He didn't have to lose her, he could take her collar off. He could take one more look inside her, see what he missed, what he'd _changed_… Living without pain would be so _advantageous_. No one would ever hurt him again. Black-suits and lab coats could pump him full of whatever they wanted – he would be _unstoppable_. Her head lolled forward dripping blood onto her feet and down her legs.

"You're just a little boy, stealing things," she whispered, "to become special enough so someone will _love_ him…"

He was _already_ alone. She was getting married, she belonged to someone else, she wasn't _his_. Everything he'd told her was bullshit – she _was _moving forward, and she _was_ letting go. But he could hear the synapses firing in her brain, could smell the hormones and chemicals. The waves of electricity that danced along her neurons were enchanting and his fingers ached to trace them, to learn their last hidden secret, to listen to their distant siren call. She used her remaining strength to lift her head, her eyes peering into his soul in the darkness, tears diluting the red stains on her cheeks.

"Just take the collar off and I'll _give_ it to you."

She would _share_ herself with him. And for a split second, her face transformed. It was just the flash of an image – one of a raven-haired beauty with a graceful dimpled smile – it was the last person to truly share her humanity with him and a face he hadn't seen in over two decades. One he thought he'd never see again, one he'd forgotten. And as quickly as she'd come she'd disappeared. He was frozen in place, feeling as if he'd been punched in the stomach, suppressing an irrational urge to sob. This was all _wrong_. Snapping back to reality, he jammed his hand into his pocket and retrieved the tool that would remove her collar. He forced his hands to stop shaking as he freed her. He jerked away from her, falling back against the far wall, as her body crumpled. He could still smell her blood, he still hungered for her badly enough his skin was crawling and he wanted to rip it off, wanted to gouge out his own eyeballs, wanted to scream until he had no breath left in his lungs. He crawled away to the mouth of the cave where there was fresh air and he curled in on himself, yanking at his hair out of withdrawal.

"I'm here, I'm okay. _Take_ it," he heard her say. He didn't dare move. After a pause, she continued. "You know, I meant what I said. You can't keep doing this, building this arsenal of abilities. What are you really using it for?" He wished she'd stop, but he knew by now she'd stop when she was damn good and ready. And she was _never_ damn good and ready when _he_ was damn good and ready. "A generation from now, everyone who's ever heard of you will be gone, and a generation after that you'll be completely forgotten. You gonna spend eternity just _starting over_ all the time? Is that what you'd call '_being defined by our past_'? Face it – you're just as stuck as me. Stagnant. The only difference is that you _wanted_ this."

She sat and watched him. He raked his fingers down his shoulders and arms creating giant slices in their wake that healed before the next pass. His breath was ragged and his skin had become clammy and sweaty. He looked awful.

"Look, the collar's off, you're not gonna hurt me now, so you can just -"

"I'm trapped Claire!" he cried. "I… I don't know how to escape this! I can't do it!"

So, _this_ was hunger. Inherited from his father, fueled by grief and rage. Moving forward, she stepped on the collar. Feeling around in the mud she also found its corresponding tool. Cautiously she approached him.

"Look at me." When he didn't comply, she sat beside him. She gave him a few moments to collect himself and waited until he finally turned his face to her, shadowed by mournful moonlight.

"Why have you never tried to kill me?" he asked.

"Because as much as you'd like to believe we're cut from the same cloth, we have one pretty damn big difference. I _don't_ believe killing is ever the answer. And I guess that includes you. Here." She lifted the collar where he could see it. "I think you _like_ that I chase you. I think you're mad because I'm getting married and in some weird way you're gonna miss me, and I think you like this collar because it temporarily stops whatever's gnawing away at you right now."

He gave her a weak, dark-rimmed glare. "Boy, you really are full of it, aren't you."

Despite his grit, he obligingly lifted his chin. She slipped the collar in place and he collapsed backwards in relief, eyes closed with bliss. She tucked the tool into his hand and far away into the distance she could hear her father calling her name. She also thought she could hear dogs barking.

"I dunno, Claire, I'm getting a little tired of being hunted…"

"Says the _hunter_. Look, it'll be a circus if the cops get their hands on you, you should probably get a head start."

He sat up and rubbed his face.

"Gabriel," Claire continued gently, assaulting his ears with the much maligned use of his real name. "You know, you were born with an incredible gift, you -"

"It's not that incredible, Claire."

'Yes it _is_. You can understand _anything_. You can _fix_ anything." She placed her hand on his bare chest, above his heart – her touch was smooth and searing and a spark snapped between them though she paid it no notice. "I just think it's a shame you don't use that gift to fix _this_." She held his gaze, heavy with meaning, for a long time before he finally nodded then slipped away into the night.

She jumped when Craig's face popped into existence before her. He pulled her into his arms and she was grateful for the warmth he spread through her body. She'd never been so happy to see him; she clutched him so tightly she thought his ribs might pop.

"You're okay?" he murmured into her ear. "Of _course_ you're okay."

"_You're_ okay! I'm sorry, baby, this day has been one godawful mess… we should've eloped…"

He nuzzled his forehead against hers. "Maybe after the FBI is done questioning you about your elicit activities or some shit," he chuckled. "That's my Claire, wouldn't have you any other way."

"Well, I hope you'll love me some other way – the '_elicit activities_' are coming to an end. I don't want the FBI gunning anyone down when we get ambushed by black-suits on a secluded beach while we're being married by some tribal shaman…"

"Heheheheh, Claire -"

"I'm serious, Craig. I have a job now, and I'm gonna have a husband." She let him help her out of the cave and accepted his tuxedo jacket, shrugging it over her shoulders. "I'm ready for the quiet life."

"Sounds good, but somehow I suspect life with you is never gonna be quiet."

~*~*~

They were set to eat chicken parmesan and veggies with dip for weeks. And cake. Craig had gone with the Claire's father and brother to help load the farm truck with props and chairs and the remaining flower arrangements, leaving Claire and her mom alone in the church kitchen packing up the food.

"He's in love with you, you know."

"Well, mom, after today I sure hope so, I mean he _did_ ask me to marry him and he _did_ put up with the wedding-of-the-century-that-didn't-happen with awful good humor…"

"You _know_ who I'm talking about."

Claire set the cellophane down on the counter a little harder than she'd anticipated.

"Why _else_ would a man kidnap a bride from her own wedding?" Sandra justified.

"I can see how that might look a little suspicious…"

"Claire, I just think that in his twisted, perverted little world the way you chase after him has become… I dunno, sort of a relationship. A really _weird_ one. He's mentally _ill_, Claire, and you told me yourself that he's got it in his head, now that you're _both_ invincible, that you belong together. How do you know he didn't plan that all along? I told you from the very beginning I didn't like it."

"I'm not invincible, mom, just…" she turned to face her mother, unable to find the right word.

"That's beside the point, Claire. I just think you should -"

"I know, I _know_, and stop worrying. I'm done chasing him – I'm gonna be a wife and an employee like a good little girl and Sylar is gonna be the FBI's headache from now on."

"That's not what I was gonna say. I just want you to be _careful_. I'm worried that, in his own mind, he's gonna think you're abandoning him and he won't take it very well. I don't think you've seen the last of him." Claire didn't think it would be a good idea to bring up Sylar's abandonment issues at that moment.

"Well mom," she said as she returned to wrapping up a tray of vegetables, "he's gonna live forever, just like me. I'm pretty sure '_seeing the last of him_' is a statistical impossibility. Did you know Micah mentioned to me he thought Sylar might have a split personality, like his mom? I think he's right." It made sense after all, he _was_ dualistic enough. She was interrupted when she felt her mother's hands land on her shoulders, slowly and gently turning her around to face her. All seriousness had left her face and had been replaced with a warm and loving smile.

"You looked so beautiful today, honey. I'm so sorry your wedding was ruined."

Claire couldn't help but smile in return. "It's okay, mom. _It is_. It was a bad idea from the very beginning, with how hunted we are and everything. Besides, I'm thinking Hawaii might be nice for attempt number two."

"Those machines, Claire… I've never seen anything like them… I don't like that my baby girl is being hunted by _anyone_. Someone's got to do something about them."

"I know, mom. I know. Just don't know what that is yet."

They hugged each other close for a little while before finishing up in the kitchen. Claire tried to push aside thoughts telling her she was never going to get her quiet life – images flashed through her head of flying drones terrorizing her coworkers and tearing up her office, of she and Craig always on the move to avoid being awakened in the middle of the night by shadow people busting into their home. She tried to ignore the nagging suspicion that one of the reasons Sylar kept hunting abilities was because he, too, was tired of being hunted himself. All she wanted was a good night's sleep and a long bath, and she was pretty sure she was going to get only one of those.

~*~*~

*** _Six months later_ ***

Tafari Nkosana was a student at University of Chicago. He was terribly dyslexic which never allowed him the capacity to be more than an average student – aside from the fact he was an extraordinary human being. His instructors believed he sat at the rear of his classes in order to disguise his disability and avoid attention, a boon they granted him. What they didn't know was that, to Tafari, a whisper was a shout – he needed the distance to protect his sensitive ears, ears that could pick up sound on nearly any frequency.

Sylar was quite aware that there would be no sneaking-in-and-attacking when it came to this target, which was why he was currently seated a few seats down the row in a large lecture hall, drumming his pencil eraser against his lips, taking a break from pretending to take notes. He'd wormed his way into Tafari's study group which was meeting that night at a local coffee shop, then he'd also convinced the young Kenyan to allow him entrance to his home under the pretense that he'd wanted to go over some notes he'd missed while out "ill". After a long evening discussing the metabolic functions of mitochondria, cross-eyed after endless pictures of other organelles clouded with arrows and too-tiny writing, Sylar decided he had at least a little respect for his new target and sprung for Chinese on the way back to the man's apartment. They both ate and chatted amiably until Sylar stood to toss both his empty carton and used chopsticks in the trash. Both hands free and clear, he turned and lifted Tafari into the air, who then began to laugh and curse in some African tongue Sylar didn't recognize, thinking his new friend was having fun at his expense, elated there was someone else on earth like him.

Sylar smiled cryptically and reached into his backpack, retrieving a spherical object with innocuous blinking red lights.

"What is that?" Tafari asked.

"This old thing? You haven't seen one of these yet? Heh, interesting. _This_ thing is capable of some serious irritation, but I've been able to reprogram it to keep the drones from… nevermind, it's not important." Sylar'd procured the object after the ill-fated wedding of his sweet little blonde nemesis – he'd discovered a cache of them hidden in one of two white vans that had been waiting at the side of the highway he'd been walking to get back to town. After… _dispatching_ the vehicles of their occupants, he'd found himself in the possession of both transportation _and_ an arsenal of new toys to play with. "No my friend," he continued, "the object is the least of your concerns. _This_, however," he lifted a finger and applied a touch of sharp pressure to the man's forehead, "is at the top of the list."

Did he just hear someone try the doorknob on the front door? He stopped and tried to listen through Tafari's frightened gasps – his voice having been stolen and unable to emit any cries for help. Sylar moved to the door and put his ear against it. No, it was just a neighbor in the hall. He repositioned himself to begin slicing.

Tafari's throat wheezed a silent wail as the first trails of blood welled from the slice on his head. What was that?!? That time Sylar definitely heard a noise coming from the fire escape. He held up his two index fingers to tell his prone victim he'd be right back, earning him a wide-eyed glare of terror and confusion.

He ripped open the sliding glass door that led to the fire escape. An orange, fuzzy blur brushed past his leg as it darted into the kitchen in search of a food bowl.

"Oh for shit's sa-"

He thought he heard a voice from somewhere above him – a whisper or a taunt. She had to be around here somewhere. She would need to be dealt with before he could continue. He followed the stairs up the fire escape one flight at a time, never encountering another soul, until he reached the roof – a dark, quiet, uninhabited roof. He turned his anger inward – he'd let his mind play tricks on him, a moment of weakness, a secret desire Gabriel had convinced him to indulge.

She wasn't here, and she wasn't coming. She wasn't going to chase him anymore.

His heavy footsteps returned him to Tafari's back door. He was finally free of her, he could have everything he wanted – he could build himself into the perfect machine and singlehandedly storm the super annoying evil scientist stronghold to completely eradicate their menace and could do so unimpeded. He should feel overjoyed, liberated. Instead, he felt hollow… incomplete.

At some point during his contemplations he'd accidentally released his hold on his victim, who'd immediately fled the premises leaving the front door wide open, still swinging. Knowing the authorities wouldn't be far behind – along with anyone else who'd decided to start chasing him this week – he stuffed his sphere into his backpack which he then shouldered as he descended the fire escape stairs to the alley below.

It was a chilly December evening. He drew up his shoulders to ward off the cold. All around him were families smiling and shopping and anticipating time together with good food and pleasant surprises. He hated them all. That night his world had just gotten a little larger and a whole lot more lonesome.

**A/N #2: I get paid in reviews - love me!!!! =D**


	11. Crusade

**A/N: So a couple chapters ago I introduced another original character, the head detective. He was originally supposed to be a plot device (I shamelessly admit) yet he's taken on a life of his own in this chapter. I've wrestled with the idea of giving him an actual name, but so far he's just been "the head detective" so I think it'd be weird this late in the game. I can, however, provide a face to go with the lack-of-name: for anyone who's familiar with the show "Monk", think Leland Stottlemeyer (Ted Levine), or for anyone unfamiliar with the show "Monk", think Buffalo Bill from "Silence of the Lambs"... except _not_ a psychotic transvestite... and he has a moustache.**

**I don't own Heroes or anything remotely related and I bow humbly before the television gods, please have mercy on me. Rated "M" for language, some violence, some blood & guts, and eventually some sexual imagery. And please review! If I've massively screwed something up, I'd like to know =D**

**11) Crusade**

Running this hard certainly did nothing for his image. Sylar didn't _run_ from things, Sylar _maimed_ things. _Things_ ran from _Sylar_. He'd made the mistake of stopping and turning just once to employ a little telekinesis and a healthy dose of unnatural lightning only to be completely embarrassed by the large number of shadow people that were still left chasing him. They'd forgone machinery once it became apparent he was smart enough to know how to throw their forces back at them. Their current tactic was to defeat him through sheer numbers. The problem was that he'd only been able to accumulate five more spheres (his original supply having been used and destroyed) and two drones and, while they'd been successful at eliminating about twenty of his pursuers, he wagered he was still left to deal with another twenty or more on his own. The suits they wore were highly resistant to the lightning and his powers of disintegration, albeit less so to the blunt force trauma of being flung against concrete or asphalt or bricks or whatever. The ones he tossed were replaced as quickly as they were dispatched – he was being swarmed. They'd also given up on tranquilizer darts once they'd discovered they were quickly deflected with a flick of the wrist. It looked easier than it was and had taken a lot of practice – a lot of practice he'd been subjected to lately. That night they were using something new – scalding hot nets made of electrostatic energy. _Those_ were a little tougher to deflect. If he stopped again they would have him. He had no choice left but to run.

He didn't know Atlanta well – okay, he didn't know the town _at all_ – which made him feel like he was running blind. He had no idea where the good hiding places were, what dead-ends to avoid, or where he could find a crowd this time of night in which he could immerse himself. He fought a creeping sense of panic that the pack of black-suits nipping at his heels would outlast him on foot. He was grateful, for the first time _ever_, for a couple of the gifts he'd inherited from his father – his height and his somewhat leggy nature. His straining muscles propelled him into the longest stride possible one foot after the other as he splashed through puddles in an alleyway behind a large hotel or apartment complex, he couldn't be sure. He jumped a fence and made for a parking garage adjacent to the building.

The myriad footsteps behind him echoed thunderously through the concrete maze as they fanned out, preventing him from choosing a new direction that would allow him any amount of separation. To steal a little space he started ripping car doors off their hinges and flinging them behind him, grinning as he heard the sickening wet grunts when his armaments made contact with soft flesh. He'd made it to the second floor landing but was unable to race to the next floor having been met by a wall of black-suits moving in to circumvent him. He paused and spun a circle, sweat trickling into his eyes and his chest on fire with the exertion. There was only one other place for him to go. He charged forward and never slowed down – just leaped over the concrete barrier to plummet two stories to the ground below.

He writhed in agony (taking the advice he'd received from Claire outside the crashed shuttle), snapping his bones back in place to avoid them healing _out_ of place. His progress was slow as he pulled himself into a cover of shadows and tried to keep from screaming. Both of his legs were broken. What was _really_ unfortunate was that this crop of black-suits wasn't as stupid as their predecessors – a small cadre of their number had remained outside anticipating such a move, and had drawn close enough that it was really only a matter of seconds before they'd spot him. They were almost as dark as their surroundings, silently padding while their black, featureless and eyeless faces searched. He made up his mind – he'd have to suffer through the pain and heal on the run. A reflexive cry escaped his lungs as he stumbled away rapidly, catching their attention. His fractured bones were scarcely able to support his weight. He also suspected a head injury as he wobbled out into the street – he was having trouble maintaining his balance. He skidded to a stop and collapsed to his knees when a cavalry of five police cars, two black vans, and three 4x4's screamed onto the pavement, converging before him. He pulled his hands up before his face, blinded by the throng of blazing headlights and police flashers. Car doors slammed and he grimaced at the cacophony of a zillion firearms being drawn upon him. He _hated_ being shot.

"_FREEZE! FBI!!! HANDS WHERE I CAN SEE 'EM!_"

~*~*~

_*** eight months earlier ***_

The head detective felt fortunate he was accustomed to the amount of weirdness that accumulated around the people he interrogated. His less-experienced comrades and the local authorities, however… had been a tad blindsided. He knew he'd arrived at a wedding and was surrounded by a large concentration of extraordinary people with extraordinary abilities. He'd _expected_ extraordinary circumstances and hadn't been let down. What he _hadn't_ expected, however (and probably should have), would be that his quarry would brazenly make an appearance at such a public gathering and then cart off with the very person he had come to see… about him no less.

When the flock of drones had emerged from behind the church to scatter the panicked congregation across the church lawn, Noah Bennett had known exactly what to do. He had made preparations. Digging his arms deep into sculpted topiaries that had been set out for the event, he came up with a pair of shotguns, one of which he tossed to a tall but chubby dark-haired man he'd referred to as "Matt". Unsure of what to do, the detective feared the scene would dissolve into chaos. Several of the guests had spread out into defensive stances, using various abilities in attempts to thwart their attackers: a blonde woman coated her surroundings with ice while a younger gentleman employed several talents mimicking those around him. And there were many. Some had been shot with darts and were incapacitated, face down in the grass. The groom was a blur, moving through the crowd, dragging the unconscious forms to safety. Noah Bennett was firing on the drones then loading, then firing again , then loading. Not wanting to be the guy with the thumb up his ass, he followed this course of action until the strangest thing happened. A voice – a male voice – that he heard, but not with his _ears_, told him to fall back to the church. Noah leapt to the doors, ushered his wife and son through, then began waiving the converging mass of guests inside.

"They can't operate underground," he cried then pointed to an entryway, "go there! Down the hall, second door on the left – that'll take us to the basement!"

The detective never ever _ever_ liked the idea of basements – years of hardened training screamed at him not to back himself into a corner. Those same years of training, however, did _not_ prepare him for dealing with floating miniature aerial weaponry. Believing Noah knew something he didn't about why the buzzing menace wouldn't "_operate underground_," he and his backup joined him in the basement after they'd assisted the civilians in making their way first. At least the reprieve would allow them a moment to regroup and formulate a plan… assuming Noah didn't already have one. And it appeared he did – a table in the middle of the room was the resting place of a sizable arsenal and an ample amount of ammunition.

"Mr. Bennett, I really hope for your sake that -"

"Yes, officer, and I know this is a house of _God_, but -"

They were both interrupted by what sounded like a helicopter landing out front, followed by footsteps on the floor above them – way too many to belong to the missing bride and her captor. Unless this _Sylar_ had the ability to multiply himself… which he'd totally buy. He watched as a blonde girl toward the back drew the children of the congregation into a circle around her. They clasped hands and she closed her eyes – they disappeared. Doors upstairs began to crash off their hinges as if they'd been kicked. People were hunting where the machines couldn't go.

He jumped when something clanged against the door and he instinctively raised his firearm like the rest of his comrades. He noticed Noah and Matt both held an identical stance – it was obvious to the detective's seasoned eye that these two men were not as civilian as they appeared. He maintained his posture and raised his hand, signaling to anyone who was armed that they were to hold their fire. After a couple heartbeats a greenish gas began to seep under the door, and the doorknob began to turn.

"No _way_," said the young man he'd heard someone call "Peter" as he placed himself between the officers and the staircase that rose to the door. He raised his arms in a gesture that made him look as if he were pushing – whatever was on the other side of that door was _not_ going to get through.

"Bennett," he hissed, "I can't hold them off forever – we've gotta figure something out!"

Noah looked helplessly to the detective. "These people aren't going to stop and they're not going away. They have one objective – to get what they want at any cost. I think you understand what I'm saying."

They were going to have to _fight_ their way out. There were some trespasses, however, that the detective couldn't forgive.

"Mr. Bennett, I can't allow you to use that weapon -"

"Not even in self defense?!?" his son cried.

"Be quiet, Lyle."

"I'm a police officer," Matt spoke up.

"In this jurisdiction? On duty?" the detective asked. Rules were rules. Matt shrugged begrudgingly. Both he and Noah surrendered their weapons and placed them on the table.

The detective and his squad split themselves to kneel down and take cover on either side of the staircase, ready for anything.

"Wait!" a dark-haired, green-eyed girl called. "The instant you open that door we're all gonna get gassed. Let me take care of that first." Her body dissipated into a misty streak that shot through the door.

"Don't get caught, Liv!" a young African-American man called after her.

"I'm gonna give her a few minutes then open the door," Peter instructed. "You won't get shot – I'll catch their fire. They won't be using lethal force anyway – they want us _alive_."

Well, great_. That_ made the situation a lot stickier.

"Shoot to disable, guys," the detective directed, "and only if you _have_ to."

"Oh, you'll have to," Noah supplied.

The door swung open and Peter never stood a chance. He was immediately engulfed in what looked like a net except that it crackled an angry red with an energy of its own. Back arched and paralyzed on the floor he had been removed from the fight and the group had been robbed of its first line of defense. Their assailants were nothing like what the detective had ever seen before, except maybe once in a childhood nightmare – faceless black specters with silent shifting feet coming to carry them off to some hellish demon-land. Gathering his wits, he called out to them.

"FBI! Stop where you are or we'll shoot!"

The first group through the door halted their progress having spotted the officers surrounding the staircase, sights lined up and fingers on their triggers. With a very rapid and daring move, the black-suit in the lead tossed an object he had been holding in his hand. Before it hit the ground the confined space rang with the earsplitting din of gunfire, wounding and disabling several of their pursuers. The object bounced and exploded with life, becoming another red electric net that quickly expanded and threatened to ensnare anyone who wasn't quick enough to get out of its way. Another group of black-suits charged down the staircase – the detective's younger partner reacted by reaching up and toppling a pair of them down the remaining stairs where they rolled across the floor and into their own net. The space they left behind became crowded with armed officers, blasting holes in shoulders and kneecaps, painting the stairs a slippery red. They were making progress.

Once the officers ascended the staircase and had begun to form a barrier in the hallway, Matt and Noah snatched what ammunition they could from the table and joined them. Sandra knelt beside Peter as the energy encasing him ebbed away – she and Lyle hoisted him to his feet. Others began to drag wounded black-suits into the net of their own device, still buzzing ferociously in the middle of the basement.

Two spheres with blinking red lights rolled to bump into the toes of the detective and his fellow officers. A misty cloud burst through the wall to his right to enshroud them, one at a time, leaving behind sparking useless shells. There was a raucous out on the lawn and he could see through the window another helicopter landing, bursting with shadowy reinforcements. This was quickly getting out of hand. He hated having to make decisions like these. He pulled his face into a hard line and stared down the next wave charging through the corridor to greet them.

"_STOP WHERE YOU ARE_!!! I'm telling you _RIGHT NOW_ that as an officer of the U.S. Government I _AM_ authorized to use deadly force where necessary!!! _DON'T_ make me think it might be!"

The black-suits stopped, but did not recede. He took one bold step forward, glaring at them down the barrel of his 9mm.

"Abduction is a felony offense on this soil, gentlemen, even the _threat_ of it. You've been _warned_. I will do whatever is necessary to keep these people free. I suggest if you're not interested in finding out the full extent of just how serious I am, you pack up yourselves and your shit and you hop _right back_ into those choppers."

For a silent moment that stretched across an eternity, nothing happened.

"_DO YOU THINK I'M JOKING_?!?" the detective bellowed as he pushed forward another step. The black-suit at the head of the group spread his arms wide and backed up.

"I'm not reaching for a weapon," his muffled voice stated as his right hand very slowly curved around to reach an object attached to his utility belt.

"I hope for your sake you're not – you'd have to be faster than _me_, and I don't think you are."

Anticipation like electricity surged through the detective's fingers as he watched the black-suit retrieve a communication device –he'd been very ready to yank back on that trigger. He held his position while the black-suit made his call. It was clear that the guests weren't the only ones who hadn't expected the FBI and the police to make an appearance at this wedding. He'd second-guessed coming in the beginning – he had a son who'd gotten married the previous year, the memory was still fresh in his mind. He wouldn't have wanted any badges popping up to ruin that day either. He wasn't completely inhuman. However, the lawman in him knew this was quite possibly the only way he could be sure he'd get the opportunity to confront Ms. Claire Bennett without her slipping through his fingers – she wouldn't just run away from her own wedding. And yet… here she was missing. The fact remained, however, that if he _hadn't_ shown up, there was no telling what unspeakable horrors would've befallen these people. He vowed to never second-guess himself again.

After the black-suit had muttered something to someone about unforeseen circumstances and unexpected offensive maneuvers, the crowd began to recede. The detective kept everyone in the hallway and the basement as he watched them leave. Untrusting, he ordered his men to make a perimeter search before he would allow anyone to take a single breath of fresh air. He rolled his shoulders, doing his best to relieve the bunching tension he hadn't realized was building there.

He was getting too old for this.

~*~*~

_*** later that evening ***_

"Miss Claire Bennett, I presume?" the head detective asked as he eyed with amusement the young woman who appeared, startlingly, to be no more than sixteen. Short, petite, and just as weirdly youthful as she'd been described heretofore, she was hardly what he'd pictured when he'd first imagined the cunning huntress who'd had better luck tracking the vicious and terrifying Sylar in the past year than he'd had over the past six, or maybe even more. She was wrapped in a large grey blanket that concealed the fact she was only dressed in her underwear and a black t-shirt that had somehow mysteriously replaced the wedding dress they'd found near the creek a couple hours before they found her. One of the hounds was still following her, sniffing her ankles, fortunate that the girl _liked_ dogs.

"For _now_, yeah, unfortunately…" she replied, throwing an exasperated hand about, indicating the surrounding area and the events that had taken place there. "I'm supposed to be saying, 'nope, Claire Dalton, sorry you got the wrong girl'."

"Well, as long as you've got a signed marriage license you can be whoever you want," he breathed an easy laugh as he rubbed his pounding forehead. The flashing red and blue lights in the dark were painfully assaulting his retinas. "Look, I realize this has been _some day_, has been for _all_ of us, so I'll make this -"

"I know I have _you_ to thank for rescuing my family and my friends and for organizing the search party who found me, but you have to realize I'm really not all that interested in having this little chat until I've had a bath and some clothes. "

"Like I was _saying _-"

"And some cake."

"_I'll make this quick_," he insisted," because I came all this way to find you and even crashed your wedding just so I can ask you _one damn question_. I only want to know how you _find_ him." And he hated asking knowing he'd gotten so close today, probably no more than mere meters.

She was silent while she stared at him thoughtfully.

"That's all I need to know," he continued, "and then we can all go home."

"What did you think of our newest stalkers? Scary, huh? Like _ghosts_ or _aliens_ or something, all… supernatural. Did you know they have a _space station_?" She pushed her face towards him when she said it – _there_ was the pistol hiding under the lace. He raised his eyebrows and nodded in disbelief. "There's a list of people they're hunting, I happen to have a copy of it. So does Sylar. I'd be happy to share it with you if it means we're done here, but that's how I chase him. Just follow the names on the list."

"And this _magic list_ just opens up and tells you which name he's chasing this week?"

She scowled. "I think you know by now what they want from us – we all have _special abilities_. Maybe mine makes me a _really good guesser_. Tell you what, you want him? Gimme a call sometime, I'll tell you exactly where to find him – I'm _done_ with him. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm getting a little _tired_ of standing here in my underwear." She started across the lawn before she spun around and said, "You know he's still around here somewhere, right? He probably hasn't gotten too far. You should be out _there_, hunting him down instead of bugging _me_."

He watched her march away, deciding not to tell her he'd already been radioed ten minutes ago and informed the trail had gone cold. Abruptly cold, as if he just vanished into thin air… or became someone else. Hands in his pockets, he kicked at a clump of grass when he heard someone approach him from behind.

"Cellular regeneration."

"Excuse me?" The detective turned toward the voice, recognizing Noah in the dark.

"_Cellular regeneration_ – that's her ability. She's been on this crusade for years, to be open and truthful about it, try to live with it like she's blind or deaf or something, like it's a handicap and she's not really all that different from anyone else. You're the first person she's lied to about it in a long time." Noah stepped out of the shadows to confront the detective face to face. "That's why she chased him – she's the only person in the world he can't hurt. He has the same ability, you know. Took it from _her_."

"I know he has a _lot_ of abilities."

"Yeah… The person you _really_ want to talk to just left – she's on the first flight back to Los Angeles in the morning with her family. Her name is Molly Walker. Her foster father is Matt Parkman – the cop. He's with the LAPD, he's not hard to find."

"Why wouldn't Claire just say that?"

"Because Molly's just a _kid_. Ordinarily I wouldn't say anything either, but Sylar's been trouble for my family for a long time." The detective recognized the ruthless gleam in Noah's eye – the one that told him he'd stop at nothing to see that son of a bitch put down for good. "You're not gonna be able to contain him, you know. He's gonna require _special accommodations_."

"Yes, I'm aware."

"You're gonna need _help_." Like daughter like father.

"Mr. Bennett, are those _your_ weapons in the basement of this church?"

"Naturally."

"Would you happened to be licensed to carry that kind of weaponry?"

Noah smiled and handed the detective his wallet. Flipping it open, he perused its contents and discovered ID cards belonging to companies he knew were defunct government splinter cell operations. Bennett was "old salt", and if the detective thought hard enough about it he was sure he could remember references to him from very old files. Satisfied, he handed back the wallet.

"Well, I've taken up enough of your time tonight. I wish your family all the best, thanks very much for your time."

He only hoped this Molly Walker was more afraid of Sylar than the FBI.

He met up with his partner as he sauntered to his vehicle.

"Come check this out," the younger man beckoned, yanking at his elbow. He followed him to the back of one of the ambulances that had arrived on the scene to deal with the injured black-suits. There were two inside, prone and immobilized on stretchers, receiving oxygen therapy and intravenous drugs. They were nearly ready for transport. The detective noticed that their masks had been removed. He climbed inside to take a closer look at their faces – they were identical.

"Twins…"

"More than that," his partner replied. "The last four were all the same."

Nice. They were _clones_. The circle of weirdness was now complete – it was only a matter of time before _clones_ were involved.

~*~*~

_*** eight months later ***_

"_FREEZE! FBI!!! HANDS WHERE I CAN SEE 'EM!_"

Sylar was the appetizing filler in a nasty sandwich. There were countless black-suits lined up behind him and a barricade of armed officers and flashing lights in front. This was not the _best_ day he'd ever had. The head detective stepped directly in front of the glare of a headlamp making him suddenly appear as something more than just a silhouette. Gun drawn but held low, he looked directly at Sylar before glancing above him at the shadowy figures that waited several paces behind.

"You guys are starting to be a real pain in my ass!" he yelled at them. The world stood as still as a stalemate for a few long moments before en masse they backed away and disappeared into the darkness. "Yeah, that's what I thought," he barked as he tugged at a pant leg, kneeling one knee on the wet pavement. His breath blew misty clouds in the damp February chill, shadowed in the headlights.

"So… Mr. Sylar. At last we meet."

Still squinting against the harsh light Sylar heard a flurry of footsteps before he found himself encircled by a couple dozen men. This detective had no idea what a mistake it was to chase off the shadow people – they were the only ones who had any hope of beating him. He bubbled with venomous laughter. There was a collective gasp when he simultaneously ripped away every firearm from the red-hot hands that held them.

"Your guns aren't gonna hurt me, detective…"

The lawman dipped his fingers into a pocket where they snatched up an object he'd collected from a church in Texas eight months ago.

"No, you're right, but I bet _this_ will." He tossed the object through the air to where it landed, bouncing once on the pavement and rolling into Sylar's knee. It burst alarmingly into action causing several nervous cops to duck and cover out of knee-jerk reaction. There was a dull metallic clatter when the telekinetic hold on the floating weapons ceased to exist, spilling them to the ground.

"You son of a bitch!!!!" Sylar wailed with horror as sparking red energy lanced through him, arching his spine and contorting his muscles, robbing from him the control over his own body.

The detective had been waiting years to utter the words.

"Gabriel Gray, You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an att -"

"I WILL FUCKING _KILL_ YOU!" Lights danced menacingly behind Sylar's eyes before he collapsed.

He woke up later in the back of a van, strapped to a stretcher. He was groggy and his vision was clouded, but he was conscious and very aware of the IV in his arm pumping him full of something they'd hoped would subdue him. They'd very obviously and drastically underestimated how quickly his regenerative qualities would return to him his faculties.

The head detective, having let his partner drive, was currently riding in the passenger seat of the car at the head of the caravan, staring pensively out the window drumming his ink pen on his leg. They had a hefty supply of sedative solution, but he was nervous they hadn't used enough. They only had 20 more miles to go before they'd reach the compound in the middle of the Georgia countryside – nice and secluded, not to mention _underground._ From there they could keep Sylar drugged indefinitely until they could get him shipped to the Federal Correctional Complex in Terre Haute, Indiana. Until then, however, he wasn't going to relax.

He wished he could've been more surprised when he saw the reflection in the rear-view mirror of a bright blue flare of light.

"Holy shit," his partner breathed, slamming on the brakes. The detective turned in his seat to watch the van he knew held his captive roll away off into the ditch, its headlights slicing into the starry winter nighttime sky, electric sparks scouring its surface.

"Damn. So close."

There was an explosion when the gas tank ignited and a fiery atomic mushroom lit up the air. _There_ were a couple good men the local sheriff wasn't going to get back, whose children were now fatherless. He exited the car but remained where he was, completely helpless to stop the grisly scene playing out before him. He had tempted the wrath of a monster and had lost – this was completely his fault. His partner had drawn his gun and was stomping ahead.

"Chad, buddy, no," the detective breathed but his voice completely failed him over the sounds of screaming and gunfire.

He was paralyzed as he watched the massacre, watched pieces of car – jagged chunks of aluminum shrapnel – fly in all directions. Next there were broken and bloody bodies, some charred and smoking. Some were definitely dead, others would've been better off that way. Tendrils of reaching deadly lightning snaked up the highway to fall short before his feet, but reflex took him back a couple steps anyway.

The scene suddenly grew silent, save for the crisp wind whistling over his ears. He then heard footsteps.

"Chad?" he called out hopefully, though he knew better. He vainly raised his weapon before it was snatched from him and he was lifted high in the air by a force that squeezed at him painfully from all sides.

"Detective, I realize this is the first time we've met," purred the tall figure striding toward him, "which is why some of your men have survived. The next time we meet they won't." He drew close and the detective could see him well, flashing lights and flames reflecting savagely in his dark eyes. As he spoke, he counted off on his fingers. "_One_, being chased pisses me off. _Two_, being _manipulated_ pisses me off. _Three_, being drugged _really_ pisses me off. _Four_ – and this one is important, okay? – being _shot_ pisses me off." He reached up and took the detective's face in his hand. "And the fifth is a new one so I want to make sure you're paying attention, I don't like repeating myself. Getting netted by red sparkly electric shit really, _really_ pisses me off."

Sylar took a couple steps back to survey him, and the detective felt the invisible pressure around him begin to bruise. He tried not to make a face, tried not to give the monster what he wanted, some sort of reaction, but he failed miserably.

"Alright," Sylar said, setting his audience back on his feet. "What remains of your little cavalcade here is gonna need medical attention. I suggest you see to it instead of doing anything stupid. I think you know what I mean. Things here could be worse, I _promise_."

With that he turned, ducked his hands into his pockets, and began to walk away, becoming a black apparition moving amongst the smoldering rubble.

"I can keep you safe, you know!" the detective heard himself cry, finally finding his voice. Sylar stopped, but paid him no more attention than a chin over his left shoulder. "The man I saw earlier looked awful tired, and number one – being chased _pisses you off_. They're never gonna stop chasing you." Sylar raised his eyes to the stars, but didn't move. He knew he was right.

"I know I can't make capital punishment stick on you, given your… _special circumstances_," the detective continued, "but what I _can_ guarantee is that you'd be locked in a cell to rot for a long, long time. _Underground_. I know it's not an ideal solution, but I might be your _last hope_."

This time Sylar turned to face him, and the smoking air between them hung heavy with the pause. The thoughtful look in his eye turned cold and he raised his right arm.

"So, did I mention being manipulated pisses me off?"

A bolt of energy lanced from his fingers to nail the detective in the abdomen knocking him out of his shoes and several feet into the air. He was unconscious for approximately forty-five seconds before he awoke to find himself alone. Every hair on his body standing on end and unable to locate his shoes, he called 911.

~*~*~

There were times when Claire appreciated the fact that her husband traveled a lot for his job – people in research and development held a _lot_ of conventions. A couple quiet evenings here and there spent in a relaxing bubble bath, listening to _her_ music, and reading a book uninterrupted were pretty hard to turn down. However, with the threat of shadow people always lurking on the horizon and the additional complications that came with trying to buy a house… she would gladly have given up one of those nights, if for nothing more than a foot rub. Her job was busy, her commute was busy, the grocery store was busy, and the phone call that currently boggled her attention was also busy. She wrestled with balancing two grocery bags, shouldering her noisy cell phone, and unlocking the door all at the same time. The realtor who was currently buzzing her ear off at a mile a minute was the energetic, housewife-like, aerobics-instructor kind that probably required less sleep than Craig and spent _way_ too long on the phone hammering out banal details, but she truly managed to get the job done. She just had this uncanny knack of only calling when Claire's hands were full and she was incredibly difficult to get off the phone.

As if on cue, Claire felt the device leave crevice where it had been pinched between her ear and her shoulder. She blinked for a moment, thinking she'd dropped it, but she never heard it hit the ground. Across the room the dim light from its display lit the shadowy features of a familiar face. Her eardrums no longer being assaulted by a nasal and overly-caffeinated falsely-chipper voice, a small part of her _hated_ admitting she was grateful to see him at that very moment.

"Well, well, if it isn't the big bad wolf," she sighed, hoping she'd get the chance to at least set down her groceries… as they left her hands to blanket the kitchen floor with their innards. "Gee, thanks. So _good_ to see you, as usual… Thanks for getting me off the phone, though – I swear that woman is crazier than _you_."

"Claire, I'm _not_ cra-"

"Uh huh huh _huhhhh_ da Nile ain't just a river, buddy."

"Where have you _been_?"

"Umm… _here_? _Work_? I don't understand your quest -"

Her feet left the floor and she tucked protectively around her belly. She saw stars as she was smashed, predictably, into the wall.

"Where. Have. You. _Been_?"

She clutched harder at her abdomen and sneered at him.

"What's the matter Sylar? Not having such a good time hangin' out, being all '_defined by your past_' and what not? You gettin' lonely?"

"I'm just curious. What do the people at your office really _know_ about you? And how long do you think you'll work for them? Do you think they won't notice that you look sixteen when you're forty?"

"Sylar, really, why does this bother you? Is this _seriously_ why you've broken into my house? To remind me how _special_ I am? _Again_? Like I don't _know_ or something? What is with this crusade of yours? Because I don't get it."

He pressed her and she winced. And then it hit him – Claire didn't feel pain and she _never_ winced.

"If you're so unhappy with your eternity you should change some-" She was interrupted as she was stretched spread eagle, stiff as a board.

"I'm _pregnant_!!!" she screamed.

All he could do was stand, blink, and breathe. Somewhere deep there was an ache he couldn't identify. He could hear her heart palpitating rapidly and, for the first time in years, the wide-eyed stare she gave him was radiant with fear. Her usual defiance was gone without a trace, which made the whole encounter feel… incomplete. Alien. Unsatisfying.

They both jumped when her phone rang in his hand. "Claire can't come to the phone right now," he stated into it before hanging up and tossing it behind him onto the couch.

"You're _what_?"

"You heard me. I'm pregnant. We lost the first one a little over a month ago, we're trying again."

There was a brief moment of silence as he regarded her and his expression moved through a medley of different emotions beginning with shock then reverence, ending with cold fury and something that _almost_ looked like a blend of betrayal and jealousy.

"Awfully quick, don't you think? Shouldn't you be married for a while?"

"I don't see how that's any of your damn -"

"I can't believe it. You let him knock you up with his _demon seed_?"

"_Demon seed_? Uhh, that _demon_ is my _husband_, and he didn't just _knock me up_ – we planned this. It's what married people do, right? They start families? Maybe you've heard of it?"

He seared her with a look. Perhaps she could've chosen better wording.

"Claire, what're you gonna do with a _baby_?"

"Gee, Sylar, I don't know. What _will_ I do with a baby? Well, I thought I'd start by delivering it then naming it, then I think I'd nurse it and love it and feed it and clothe it and raise it and give it a _home_, and -"

"Okay, so how many PTA meetings were you thinking of going to? You really gonna go to basketball games or graduations? What's gonna happen the first time you gotta go talk to the principle? What's gonna happen when little junior has a sleepover and his little buddy won't stop hitting on his _hot sister_? What's gonna happen after college when he meets the love of his life and he wants to take her home to meet his mother?"

"It's none of your business! And I still don't understand why you're so hell-bent on -"

"Because you're meant for so much _more_, Claire!"

"More of what?!? More of you?!? Chasing you around forever, keeping you company? Playing the hero to your villain?!? Being a part of your twisted little fantasy world where we play Tom and Jerry for the _entire_ rest of time without ever getting bored of it?!? Please excuse _me_ for not having this overwhelming need to prove to the world how _special_ I am! You know, it's not _my fault_ that I didn't suffer some kind of tragic childhood trauma that made me completely lose my mind and want to kill everything I see… even though you _did_ terrorize my high school and kill a friend of mine… but whatever. This is the path I wanna walk, and I'm gonna walk it and you're just gonna have to be pissed about it. And I'm _certainly_ not going to go chasing you around while I'm carrying a child."

He glowered darkly as he drew near her. He idly traced one dangerous finger in circles around her belly button.

"Stop," she spat.

"You know, lions are savage beasts. Did you know that when a male takes over another male's territory the first thing he does is eradicate any evidence of his lineage?" He captured her eyes with his, making his meaning very clear.

"Sylar, don't…"

"He kills the cubs – all of them – before making his own." He continued to caress her lovingly. "When the females stop nursing they immediately come into heat. Do you wonder if they ever forget their slain children?"

They both glanced at the couch as the phone started ringing again. When Sylar turned back to her, he saw her face had relaxed.

"Oh my god, I know what this is about. It's fucking _true_. _Oh my god_ I can't believe it. It _IS_ – it is _fucking_ _true_!"

This completely derailed his train of thought.

"What…?"

"You're in love with me!"

"_What_?!?! Claire, that's the dumbest thing I've ever –"

"You _are_! And you can talk all you want about lions, we both know you're no baby-killer."

The phone was still ringing. It was very distracting.

"Seriously, you _are_. You miss me, you don't want to live without me, you're pissed I married some guy, you _hate_ that I'm carrying his child, and you _love_ me – _I'm_ what's been missing in your life for years and you don't even know it – and for the love of Christ will you let me answer that damn _phone_?!?!"

"You know, Claire, not everything is about _you_…"

"This _isn't_ about me – it's about _YOU_ breaking into my house and stalking me because you're in _love_ with me now _gimme the flippin' phone_!!!"

The offending object flew through the air, blinking and serenading, until it smacked into the center of Claire's right palm.

"Hello?" she answered as Sylar released her, gently allowing her body to slide down the wall until her feet touched the floor.

"This is she… yes, he's my husband…"

After a few seconds she turned her body to face him, and he could plainly see the color had drained from her face. Her eyes, wide, bored directly into his delivering a look he'd never seen on her face – he'd never seen her give to him or anyone else, even in the moment he ripped her ability out of her skull all those years ago. It was panic. Real, raw, mournful, contagious panic. His brows drew together in concern before he could stop them and she clutched a fist into the front of his shirt and hung from it.

"… yes, I'll come immediately… how bad is it? Yes, yes I'm coming, I'll be on the first flight…"

She didn't hang up the phone. She dropped it. The hand that had held it clamped over her mouth – Sylar thought she might scream or throw up, he wasn't sure. Instead, she just swallowed.

"Craig's had a stroke," she whispered. "They're not sure he'll make it. He's in fucking Albuquerque…"

"I know." This should've earned him a harsh retort, but went unnoticed. She released the wrinkled patch of shirt and began to wander to one of the back rooms placing a hand on her forehead.

"Gotta pack, gotta get a plane…"

He thought of using his telekinesis to stop her, but instead he used a hand – a warm gesture on her shoulder.

"Stop. Sit."

Raiding her closet, he picked a few items that were stylish yet comfortable and folded them into a duffle bag along with some toiletries, socks, and clean underwear, chastising himself for lingering on the lacey items a bit too long.

"Give me your keys, get in the car," he directed upon returning to the living room, placing the bag in her lap. He retrieved her fallen cell phone and handed over her purse.

Doing as he asked, they exited and locked the apartment, then took the elevator to the parking garage below. In the car, Claire gathered herself enough to call Micah in order to line up a flight. The remainder of the ride to the airport was spent in tense silence while she stared out the window at the passing nighttime landscape, chewing her lip with worry.

"You know," Sylar muttered once they'd arrived at the terminal, "he's gonna be fine. Just explain to them you have healing blood and he needs a transfusion."

She whipped to face him, gripping his shoulder with a fierce strength he didn't know she had, one that completely belied her moment of incredible weakness.

"Yes! Yes – I'll do that!" She didn't remove her hand, but turned to look out the windshield, swallowed, then nodded. "He's gonna be fine."

He popped the trunk and they both climbed out of the car. She grabbed her bag, slung it over her shoulder, then paused. She measured him up with a soft gaze that made him intensely uncomfortable, making the tips of his ears burn – making him feel weakly human. Her lips began to form the words "thank you" but stopped, leaving them hanging unspoken in the air between them. He didn't need to hear them to understand the sentiment, and appreciated the fact that the moment hadn't grown that much more awkward. He merely tugged his chin toward her, telling her to go, catch her plane. She nodded once then walked away.

After he'd left a wad of cash with the parking attendant (he didn't bother asking himself why he was paying to board her car… it was just another _thing_) he took a taxi to the train station where he caught a connection heading back to New York City. He felt oddly disquiet and spent a lot of the ride squirming in his seat, replaying the words she'd said to him.

He wasn't sure he was the kind of man who really knew what love was or how to make it work. His own words echoed through his mind and he was no closer to an answer – he had no idea how to make love stay. He didn't know how to love Claire Bennett and truthfully didn't believe he did. He begrudgingly had to admit that she was right about one thing, however: he _did_ miss her.

**A/N #2: "He didn't know how to love Claire Bennett and truthfully didn't believe he did.****" Yeah, sounds like *someone* need to hear another speech about a river in Egypt!**


	12. You Can Never Go Home Again

**A/N: I think this was the toughest chapter to write yet. This one took a while. It's massively important because it will conclude what I've started terming "Volume One". Look for this story to continue in "A Far Distant Future - Vol Two". The reason I'm splitting the story is because going forward things will be quite different from everything that came before. It kinda just makes sense to divide it.**

**I don't own Heroes or anything remotely related and I bow humbly before the television gods, please have mercy on me. Rated "M" for language, some violence, some blood & guts, and eventually some sexual imagery. And please review! If I've massively screwed something up, I'd like to know =D**

**12) You Can Never Go Home Again**

The head detective entered his office with a tense, stiff-kneed gait. He allowed the door to slip shut behind him but he left the lights off, needing the darkness to mitigate the blinding headache that was already building behind his eyes. He slumped heavily into his chair and dragged a hand over his harrowed face. He was lucky to still be on the case after the mess that was made in Georgia. He'd just left a meeting with his superiors that was nothing short of a witch hunt – they were eager to blame anything or anyone in order to have some explanation to provide to the press and the families of the fallen officers, but the detective found it odd that no one was blaming the actual individual who was truly responsible. Having been raked over the coals with questions like "What could you have done better?" and "What other resources could you have pulled together?" he wanted to scream, "_guys, this is SYLAR we're talking about_," but maintained a stoic silence. He only allowed his indignity to strengthen his resolve.

Opening his desk drawer to find a pencil in the dark, he set himself to the task of marking on his calendar all the wakes and funerals he had upcoming to attend. He also wanted to find time to visit Chad, his young partner, in the hospital. He wasn't looking forward to the words he was certain Chad's wife had for him. A small cough snapped his attention to the far corner of the office. He stood immediately, his chair rocketing backward into the wall, his pistol drawn in a flash and sights lined up on one of two man-shaped shadowy pillars that flanked a seated woman. A severe-looking blonde woman. How had they escaped his notice? Was he _really_ getting that old?

"Detective," she stated, "there's no need for that weapon. I'm surprised you haven't already come to the conclusion that we're on the same side."

"Ma'am, with all due respect, I've seen your tactics first hand and I gotta believe you're on a side all your own…"

She stood and approached him ignoring the firearm, entering the soft, dim sunlight escaping through the blinds over the window, taking for granted the lawman's chivalry.

"We both want to see him apprehended, don't we? Do we _not_ both conclude that the sooner he is incarcerated the sooner we put an end to his seemingly endless killing spree? Do we _not_ also agree that you do not possess the proper tools with which to contain him?"

The detective lowered his gun but continued to eye the woman suspiciously.

"Are you proposing -"

"An alliance? I know this isn't an activity the US Government traditionally engages in," she replied, nudging the oppressive mound of paperwork in his inbox, "but I suppose I'm wondering how many more situations need to escalate beyond your control before you realize you don't really have any other choice."

"Lady, I've been propositioned by worse characters than you enough times in my life to know this ain't an '_alliance_' we're talking about – this is a _negotiation_. So what is it, exactly, that you want?"

Dr. Rogers steepled her fingers and tilted her head to the side, lowering her eyelids and pulling her lips into a wicked grin.

"I want him for forty-eight hours observation in my private laboratory before I deliver him to your holding facility."

"My apologies, ma'am, but that would be considered aiding and abetting a fugitive, which incidentally breaks a pretty big law in this country. I'm not gonna lie, he's not gonna be an easy catch and damn straight my job's on the line here, but I made an oath decades ago that every move I make in this position is within the confines of the law, and I'm gonna uphold it."

Dr. Rogers nodded slowly and regretfully before adding, "Then it seems we have no more to discuss. Thank you for your time and I _do_ wish you luck."

The detective remained by his desk contemplating his predicament for several minutes after his unannounced visitors had left.

~*~*~

She looked like she was locked in prayer, and truthfully she probably was. Her back was stiff from sitting at the edge of her seat, her elbows leaning on his mattress, hands clasped beneath her lips. To change her position would be to turn her eyes from him, however, and if these were his final moments she didn't want to miss any of them. She only wanted him to wake up – just long enough to tell him she loved him if that's all she could have. She'd never seen his eyes closed this long. _Ever_. Another muscle spasmed in protest so she decided perhaps it really was time to move around a bit, maybe to slip into something a bit more comfortable while she waited for Craig's parents to arrive. Their flight wouldn't land until the morning, so she figured she had a long night's vigil ahead of her.

Rubbing at the small of her back, she dipped the fingers of her free hand into the duffle to have a peek at what Tall, Dark, and Psycho packed for her to wear. She hoped it was decent… She was surprised when her hand closed around something soft but firm and definitely not intended to be worn. Her jaw dropped a little when her favorite childhood teddy bear – the one that had been sitting on the dresser – emerged from the open zipper of the bag. Sylar was such a weirdo sometimes.

"Bart, is that really you?" she asked, holding him close to her face. She ruffled the tufts of fur around his ears a bit before nuzzling his nose with her own. "You're lucky he left your head on, you know…"

She placed Bart in the crook of her husband's elbow while she slipped into the pink cotton pajamas she'd found resting beneath the bear inside the bag. Returning to her chair after changing, curling deeply into it, she entwined her fingers with Craig's and let her mind wander through her memories, reliving significant points in their relationship.

She remembered their first kiss. They were still in Boston, having rescued Dominic Jones and sent him off in her rental car. Micah had secured them flights back to New Jersey, but on such short notice the best he could get was a red-eye leaving them with several hours to kill. Cardboard take-out chowder cups having been discarded, they had spent a large portion of the evening wandering along a quiet pier listening to chatty gulls try to settle down for the night. The Atlantic lapped over craggy New England rocks in a rhythmic lullaby as they sat shoulder to shoulder, dampened by a cool misty sea spray. They'd counted stars and told each other stories and laughed at each other's jokes and held hands. He'd put his arm around her and rubbed her shoulders to keep her warm, not realizing (or caring) that discomfort wasn't really something she felt. She appreciated the gesture anyway.

Once it came time to leave their magic place to make their way to the airport, the moon ducked out from hiding behind a copse of trees and rocks to hang enchantingly in the open air above the sea. The hazy, golden halo had been mirrored softly on the water casting a spell on her heart, and before she could stop herself she'd claimed his mouth with hers. He'd made no protest, only chuckled softly and returned her affections, threading his fingers through her hair.

She wasn't sure she'd ever be able to stand on that pier again.

~*~*~

Sylar had never been afraid of the dark, at least not that he could _remember_. The kind of darkness he was most commonly familiar with, however, wasn't usually this sticky. He was ensnared and immobile, like being caught in a spider's web – one he couldn't see. As a rule, he was generically abhorrent to most emotions that didn't include amusement, menace, gratification, and victory. Fear didn't make the list of his exclusions. Like, not even _close_. In fact, it was way the hell down there with weakness or vulnerability, or maybe was even a part of that. As a result, he clamped down on the urge to scream in wild panic as the inky black claustrophobia gripped him, holding him down, preparing to have its way with him despite his thrashing, kicking fight to the contrary.

He stopped instantly, his heartbeat pounding ruefully in his ears, when he heard the low hum. Blinking red pinpoints of light winked into view, surrounding him in a flashing crimson sphere. There was a spark somewhere in his periphery to the right, and the web that trapped him ignited. Blazing energy like electricity and flames crackled and hissed up the threads until it reached him, searing and blistering his skin. At that point he abandoned his efforts to ignore his fright and succumbed to screaming, paralyzing agony. He twisted and writhed against his scalding restraints in a primal, instinctual attempt to free himself and get as far from the pain as possible, yet he had little success.

"Hush now," a voice called to him. The darkness before him parted like a curtain allowing a severe-looking blonde woman to step through. "This will all be over soon. I just want to see how you _work_."

She was suddenly very close to him, eclipsing his view, and the scorching of his flesh reached a new fever pitch. Tubes and needles impaled him, stung him from every direction, clouding his eyes and turning his stomach. His whole world was closing in on him, collapsing around him, crushing him against some white hot, razor sharp fury and he couldn't get free… couldn't escape. She cupped his face with a hand that was unnervingly cold and dry, and the gaze that she presented him carried no tenderness – it was studious. She let one finger trail lazily up his right temple to where it curiously stroked his eyebrow. Then, with blinding quickness, she slashed her fingernail across his forehead. His vision flared white, as if he'd been struck, and a deafening '_crack_' rang through his senses, like the breaking of a bone, as he finally pitched forward and tumbled into the endless dark below him.

He gasped awake, hurling himself to one side, completely amazed he didn't fling himself off the bed. The man in the bunk above him stirred a little before resuming his rhythmical pattern of snoring sleep. His roommate at the New York City hostel was kind enough though he spoke somewhat broken English. He was a little vehement in his dislike for American-style "Belgian" waffles, being a citizen of Belgium and all, but he was quiet and witty and generally left Sylar alone. To pay the man the same respect, and _not_ disturb him in the wee hours with his bothersome night terrors, he crept from the room to visit the lavatory down the hall.

Even at four a.m. he was a little surprised to find the space unoccupied, and he was grateful. He was typically very private about the things that unsettled him and preferred _not_ to have an audience, strangers or otherwise. It was a cold winter that year, making the water that flowed from the tap feel like ice, constricting the blood vessels around his eyes as he splashed some over his face. He caught a small amount in the cup of his hands from which he slurped a drink before drying himself off with scratchy brown paper towels. Leaning with his hands against the counter, he let his head hang and his mind drift in an attempt to dislodge visions of darkness and blinking lights.

Being back in New York was bittersweet – it meant he could visit his favorite sandwich shop and enjoy what _he_ thought to be a _real_ cup of coffee, and he could even walk past his apartment… but he couldn't go inside. Being someone who'd never truly understood the concept of '_home_', having grown up in a situation that'd never truly been quite '_real_', he didn't immediately recognize the sensation that crept over him, like crawling skin, as homesickness. All he knew was that he thought of Gabriel's watch shop for the first time in years, and he didn't want to kick himself. Of all the things he'd wanted at that place in his life, looking back he realized Gabriel'd had one thing for which Sylar would happily have given it all up: _rest_. Peace and quiet. As seductive was the pull of a new ability and as riveting was the terror shining in the eyes of his prey reflecting the awesome power he held over someone, those things didn't fill his bed, they didn't win him love, and they didn't make him _complete_. His eyes drifted closed as the cheerleader's voice whispered in his ear once more, asking him what it was all for, why was he really chasing these abilities? Did he really think he was going to solve the world's evils? Did he want to _become_ the world's greatest evil? Or was he just trying to fix something that was broken… like a watch that had just stopped ticking…

He opened his eyes and sighed, shoulders growing taught, when the first sounds of commotion rose to greet his ears. A high-pitched whine sliced through the night and people screamed in alarm before growing suddenly quiet. Smoky tendrils of green gas slipped beneath the door. Pulling away from the counter he rose to his full height – there were no exits from the lavatory save one, and he was going to have to fight to be able to use it.

He turned to face his adversaries as they burst through the swinging entryway, and he unleashed a maelstrom of lightning with enough force to push himself backward onto the sink counter. A netting device was launched in his direction where it landed in one of the sinks at his feet. Kicking on the faucet, he disposed of it in a violent spray of shocking sparks. He deflected another using a telekinetic slap, slamming it back down where it came from. It erupted into the same blinding blaze that had haunted his sleep mere minutes before, except this menace ensnared four or five of his enemies instead – enemies that had been quickly replaced, filing through the door to join the crushing throng mashing him against the mirrored tiles.

Watching the exit disappear behind a seething wall of blackness, all grasping arms and featureless facelessness armed with more tools than he could count that would trap him or puncture him or burn him or commit any other act of ruthless torture, he knew his chances of escape were growing slimmer by the second. Brow damp with concentration, he sharpened his telekinetic blade to a fine point and began to slash. He hacked at limbs and throats, felt bone and tendons snap and give way, and the floor became a slippery red trough funneling down to the flood drain. Many cried out and fell back, but others only strengthened their resolve pressing onward even further. Overcome with desperation, he made a final act. Pulling back his elbows, drawing the same kind of strength he had when he'd slowed a shuttle upon atmospheric re-entry or launched an entire vehicle over an enormous hole in the road, he elicited a fierce battle cry and pushed forward.

Every standing creature before him had been flattened.

He leapt from the counter and hit the ground running in a frantic dash to get outside the building. If he could just get out he could disappear, could hide, could keep running…

Hands were on him, sticking like cobwebs, yanking back on his ankles. His teeth rattled when his chest crashed to the floor. He swung his invisible blade around to free himself, scrambling to his feet and propelling himself down the corridor. A few paces landed him face to face with a hovering drone, one that flashed a blinding flare in his eyes. He could see nothing past the spots of angry light scarring his retinas, and the flying machine began to emit a frenzied screeching. He sank to his knees, hands clamped over his ears, having had two of his vital senses removed. He growled in murderous frustration and pushed outward in all directions, knocking the drone from the air and temporarily halting its effects, providing him the instantaneous opportunity to escape.

Reinforcements were waiting at the end of the hall. He wasn't quick enough to stop his forward momentum, and he'd seen them too late. He skidded on his heels and landed on his butt, hands grappling for any purchase to pull himself back up and away, when searing red energy exploded all around him. He barely registered his left cheek pummeling against the floor before the lights went out.

Three days later he woke up naked and curled tightly in a ball… on a bed. _His_ bed. In _his_ old apartment, one he'd vacated at least a year prior. Sitting up and rubbing some sense into his eyes, he was still for a few moments grasping at threads of memory as they unraveled too quickly to grab. He eventually gave up and wrapped his comforter around his body, padding barefoot into the kitchen. On the counter was an envelope, containing a brief note:

'_Rent covered, courtesy of Dr. Judy Rogers._'

Still feeling violated and more than a little confused, he lamented once more over the choices he'd made that'd left him with no one to turn to. And again… he missed the brusque wisdom of his old, sweet, little blonde nemesis.

~*~*~

She remembered the first time they'd made love. It had been her birthday. He'd taken her out someplace fancy, a restaurant that served buttery food in large portions, ordered from a completely unpronounceable menu. Well, unpronounceable for _her_, Craig eased through it like everything else – with humble grace and a dimpled smile. The dessert had been decadent (not to mention free – yay for birthdays) and the wine had given them both a heated blush, even though it would've taken considerably more than that to knock her off her feet.

It had been raining buckets that night, so that as they entered the foyer to his apartment building the air conditioning hit them like a sailing block of ice. Although Claire didn't feel its sting, her teeth involuntarily chattered and her nipples were digging holes through every layer of fabric that attempted to contain them. She bounced impatiently on the balls of her feet while Craig had fiddled with the key in the lock. Once inside, and the door had clicked shut behind them, Claire dripped in place with her hands rubbing her elbows while Craig breezed down the hall to collect some towels. Even looking back on that moment, she couldn't identify what exactly had come over her.

All she knew was that she'd wanted _out_ of those wet clothes. She had kicked off her shoes and peeled her sopping shirt over her head. Craig had re-entered the room carrying a small stack of terrycloth bundles, including a robe that had been draped over his arm, just as she shimmied her pants over her hips. His jaw dropped as they pooled around her ankles. While he _had_ expected her to disrobe, he didn't exactly think he'd get to _witness_ the spectacle.

She had surrendered to the wave of arousal that slid over her as she stood exposed before him. Capturing his eyes with hers, she held him motionless as she slowly approached him. Once they were standing toe to toe, she reached behind her and undid the clasp of her bra, then slid the straps over her shoulders allowing the garment to fall away.

Craig dropped the towels.

A grin tugged at the corner of her mouth as she bent at the waist, her eyes never leaving his, tracing a hand down his thigh and placing her nose precariously close to his groin as she reached to retrieve one that he'd dropped. She then straightened and made a grand show of drying herself off, being sure to rub several circles, over and over, around and under her breasts. She could hear a lusty breath shake in his throat. She hung the towel over the back of the couch.

Not wanting to press herself against his cold, wet shirt, she tucked her hands under it and began to strip it off. He aided her by pulling it over his head while she continued her exploration of his abdomen and chest. Her ministrations eventually led her up his neck and twisted into his hair as she pulled him down for a deep, hot kiss. Unable to contain himself, he picked her up and wound her legs around his waist – she could feel in no uncertain terms that he was ready to go. They tumbled around the side of the couch before sinking into it, and he eventually stumbled out of his pants before he sunk into _her_. Claire discovered that night, for the first time, that while Craig accomplished a great many things in his life because of his incredible speed, he _was_ capable of excelling at some things _slowly_.

Her reverie was broken by a soft whisper and a finger stroking her hand.

"Hey, honey-head…"

Her eyes shot up and drank him in. He had one eye open and one side of his face sagged uselessly toward the pillow, but he was awake and he was alive. She grasped both of his hands firmly.

"Mornin', hot rod," she beamed at him. "Everything's gonna be okay. My blood, it has healing properties, all you need is a transfusion. I tried explaining it to the doctor, but he said we needed your perm-"

"Shhhhhhh…" he silenced her with a finger before caressing her cheek. A white shot of anxiety speared her when she realized the gesture seemed somewhat… dismissive.

"You know what I love about you?" he continued. "You're everything that I'm not, but we still have so much in common."

"Craig, I can _fix_ this, I -"

"Shhhh, baby, no you _can't_. You can't take away my _ability_. This is _always_ gonna come back to get me."

Stunned and numb, she couldn't feel the tears that blinked from her eyes. The doctor _had_ mentioned something about his physiology being affected by his strange ability – something he didn't know how to treat, something he'd never seen before, something about his brain existing in a constant state of motion. Rarely able to rest, it had aged prematurely, and now it was…

"You… you knew. You've _always_ known…"

"That I'm _dying_? Yeah, I guess so. My only regret is that I never told you. I'll understand if you hate me for not being honest with you, and I won't even try to defend myself – I was selfish. And crazy – crazy for getting myself involved with a girl who'll live _forever_, right? But I thought to myself, '_maybe we're perfect for each other_,' you know? I mean, I'm the only person on earth you'll never have to watch grow old and wither away before your eyes…" he laughed weakly.

"Craig, _please_…"

"Shhhh," he cupped her face in his hand until he lost the strength to hold it up. "I need to be able to tell you this. There's two _huge_ things that you and I share, Claire Dalton. The first is something I think you'll find you share with _anyone_ who's dying too soon – we live our lives obsessed by the things we _haven't_ done. I'm not gonna do that anymore and I want you to stop too, alright? Promise me you will."

She nodded mutely.

"Did you know I'm fast enough to run on water?"

"No," she sniffled.

"Yeah. I am. I've been all over the world, Claire. And I never stopped learning things – _new_ things. Somehow I earned the love of the perfect woman, too, though I'm still not quite sure how _that_ happened. I may never get to meet my child, but I became a father. And that's the second thing we share." He dipped his fingers low to graze across her belly. "Our baby, in you. Don't stop living your life, okay? And give our baby a good one."

A sob escaped her lips no matter how hard she tried to bite it back. She didn't have the strength. She closed her eyes and drew in a deep breath to try to find some calm.

"Don't cry, honey, don't cry," he soothed, "it's okay, it's just nature. You know that I've loved you with every breath I took, right?"

She nodded strongly.

"I love you too," she managed a hoarse whisper, "every breath…"

"Five hundred years from now you'll look back on me and smile, and it won't even hurt anymore, I promise."

She didn't want to imagine. She laid her forehead on his chest and listened to him breathe, cherished every heartbeat. He rested his hand on her back, warming her shoulder blades.

Later that night, with his parents pressed against her for support, Craig passed away. He slipped from her quietly with humble grace and a dimpled smile that never failed, brandished in her memory forever.

Two hours later Claire was admitted to the emergency room with what _should've_ been crippling abdominal pain.

~*~*~

He didn't know why he was here. He'd actually been holed up in a hotel down the street for several days, observing the comings and goings from the apartment. Her parents had arrived home with her. They all left together, presumably to reconvene with the in-laws for the funeral. She had arrived again with her parents who had left shortly thereafter under the premise that her father would be returning in a matter of days with a large truck to help move her back '_home_'.

'_Home_,' he mused while standing outside her door, convincing himself he was merely waiting for the right moment to break in and that he wasn't a great big chickenshit at _all_. '_You can never go home again_.' With his hands stuffed in his pockets, toeing a circle in the carpet while the elevator dinged somewhere in the distance, he recognized they were now both in the same place – _limbo_. Purgatory. In-between-land. Stuck in place while the universe whirled around them, and '_home_' was a slippery concept, like a ghost – intangible and elusive and prone to disappearing. They only had two constants: the act of breathing and a constant, lingering _home_sickness. He telekinetically aligned the pins on the lock before turning the knob and walking inside.

He knew she heard him walk in, and he knew _she_ knew his identity, either by his gait and the weight of his footsteps or maybe his scent. She did not look up from where she sat, however – cross-legged on the floor surrounded by a sea of items that she was meticulously organizing before wrapping and packing in boxes. The only acknowledgement to his presence that she made was a pause and a glance over her left shoulder before she silently resumed her task.

The seconds stretched like years while he tried to think of something to say. '_I'm sorry your husband died, although I thought he was a miserable ponce who really only served to stifle your true potential and, oh, by the way, I didn't kill him_,' didn't really seem to cut it. He could've also tried, '_I woke up naked and missing time and feeling like I'd been raped so I figured you'd appreciate the laugh at my expense seeing as how I'd done something similar to you once_,' but thought that sounded too needy. Sylar wasn't the kind that dealt well with awkwardness so he abandoned his attempts at vocalization and opted to kneel beside her, investigating a picture in a frame. Before he could make sense of what it was she ripped it from his fingertips to send it smashing against the far wall. She stood then, suddenly, and he watched her wide-eyed. She lifted the whole box she'd been packing and with a bellowing scream launched it, in its entirety, at the same wall. The crash was deafening, shards of glass and pottery exploded everywhere, bouncing back to coat her in tiny nicks and cuts that healed instantaneously. She looked down at herself and her curse, gasping and shaking with rage.

"What the hell are you doing here," she growled between her teeth.

He'd already asked himself that question. He still had no answer. "I don't -"

She spun on him and – _POW_ – punched him in the face with all her might. He tasted blood as he flew onto his back and she attacked him, pouncing knee-first into his stomach knocking the air from him. He raised his hands above his head in surrender as she continued to pummel him, pounding large gashes above his brow and cheekbones and cracking his nose in several places. If a punching bag was what she needed, then that's what he'd be. _Again_. She shifted her assault to his throat as she circled her small hands around it, choking him and bashing his head against the floor over and over. She wailed a long, heartwrenching, howl of a wail before she collapsed against his chest. Coughing and sputtering, he clamped his arms around her shoulders. She beat against his collarbones with her fists in protest as he held her to him until finally she gave in and let him. She pressed her face into him and drenched him with long, wet, guttural sobs that shook her entire frame. She dug her fingers into his flesh and he squeezed her until his arms ached while he rocked her slowly.

"The baby," she hiccupped, trying to calm down, "I lost the baby…" She rubbed her face against him but didn't move away. "It's like my body sees it as a _wound_ or an _infection_, and it keeps trying to '_heal_' it…" She continued to cry. "It's… it was all I had _left_ of him!"

This was a loss he understood well. To have her entire life ripped out from underneath her with no warning, leaving nothing to hold onto, nothing to reach, bereft of any memory except the ones that would fade with time in her faulty human mind. Or, in his case, become instantly suppressed and erased, but whatever. The endlessness of her existence was cruel, for now she was faced with no other choice but to find a way to move on – she was going to keep moving on whether she liked it or not, this was her gift – when really all she wanted to do was find a way to hurt someone as badly as _she_ hurt. He knew this intimately and completely, and the tie that now bound them haunted him.

Before he could dwell on it further, she dawned to the realization that the man whose arms surrounded her would've caused her an equal amount of pain a long time ago had she not struck a deal with him. She shoved against him, grinding his shoulder blades painfully into the carpet, then stumbled backwards nearly toppling herself over in her hasty attempt to get free.

"What are you doing here?!?" she yelled the same question again, finding her feet. For the first time he could truly see the toll her husband's death (and, additionally, the loss of her unborn child) had taken on her. Regardless of her regenerative ability it was obvious she hadn't been eating or sleeping: her pallor was pasty and pale, dark circles like bruises ringed her eyes, and her hair was as limp as straw.

"Claire, I… I don't -"

"What, Craig's out of the way now so you can just swoop on in here and fill his shoes? Sweep me off my feet?" She made wild hand movements to illustrate her point.

"Dammit, Claire, I told you last time, that's just stupid -"

"I need you to do something for me," her tone changed, suddenly very serious. The manic mood swing alarmed him. This wasn't like her – not at _all_. He rushed to his feet and backed away from her instinctually as she approached him once more. She was quicker than he'd anticipated, though, and she twisted a fist into his shirt pulling herself close. Her free hand stroked his shoulder kindly and she gazed up at him through watery eyelashes.

"Kill me."

"Claire, you know that isn't gonna -"

"Don't fucking tell me what I know and what I don't!!! Don't pretend you don't want it!!! You have _always_ romanticized yourself as my own personal reaper, the _only one_ who's gonna be here for me when everything else is gone. Well?!? Everything is fucking _gone_!!! Congratulations! You were right, you _always have_ been – fate finally brought you here, it's our destiny or whatever, so get on with it! Right here," she pointed to a place at the base of her skull. "Just sever the head here and it'll all be over. Nice and quick."

Realizing how serious she was and that she was right, he _had_ at one point in time professed to be her one way ticket to the afterlife… he was horrified.

"Claire, I don't think I _can_…"

"Oh my god, are you _kidding me_?!? Are you _serious_??? Are you punishing me or something? Is that it?? Sylar! You are a _murderer_!!! This is what you _do_!!! Do you even _know_ how many people you've killed? You've wiped out _half my family_, you've _wanted_ to wipe out the _whole damn thing_, so you choose now – _NOW_ – to get all _impotent_ on me?!?"

"What about your family, Claire?"

"I… I can't…" She rubbed the back of her hand across her face. "I can't watch them die too…"

"So you're gonna let them watch _you_ die."

"_Fuck you_! What do you care?!? You don't care about them!!! You don't care about _anyone_! What do you know?!? Who've _you_ got to lose?!? You've got _NO ONE_!!!"

Her words were barbs and he wasn't going to let her see it, but he must've blinked or something because she squinted her eyes at him accusingly, formulating the perfect plan to get what she wanted. She knew how to play him like a fiddle.

"… Except me. Isn't that right, loverboy?" She sneered an ugly face when she said it. "Let me tell you something I've learned about _love_. It_ doesn't _stay – not for us. It _DIES_, just like everything else. And _WE DON'T_. But you don't know anything about it. No one loves you, no one ever will. You destroy everything you touch." She barked a mocking laugh. "But now you won't destroy me."

His natural empathy began to buzz at the nape of his neck, tensing all the muscles down his spine, clouding his judgment. Her hatred, her anger, seeped into him like a frigid, icy leak.

"Because you think you _love_ me," she continued.

He tried to suppress it, clear his mind, and failed. That's all he was… a giant failure.

"Heh. Your poor mother. Did she have any idea what you'd become?"

He clenched his hands into fists with the effort.

"A _monster_? Is that why she gave up her life? So you could turn into _this_??? So you could fuck up other people's lives to try to make yourself feel better? Poor Gabriel," she sing-songed, "un-wanted, un-loved, heartbroken and destined to be forgotten…"

He could feel his heart pounding and his breath came in short gasps.

"Do you _really_ hope that someday I'd learn to love you? You said that, you know – did you really believe it? Everything you said about '_building bridges_' or whatever? What bullshit. I could _NEVER_ love _you_! Look at you! You can't _LOVE_! You have _no idea_ how to satisfy me! You have no idea how to satisfy _yourself_!!! You're still a seven year old boy wrapped in a man's body! What am I supposed to do, take you home to mommy and daddy and say -"

He saw red and _snapped_.

Through a wet haze of crimson emotion he lifted her in the air and slashed at her, severing her left arm, first, above the elbow. He hacked off her other arm at the shoulder. He disemboweled her then removed her lower half at her pelvis. He chopped at her somewhere between her neck and her right collarbone, allowing her head to hang unnaturally limp behind her. Her face was still smiling. He painted a gruesome sanguine masterpiece over the walls and the carpet. He took her to pieces.

When he was done, he sank to his knees in exhaustion. He pressed his forehead to the floor balling his hands into fists underneath him, and he allowed himself a moment to softly cry. He knew this feeling, the one that had put a vice grip on his stomach and had felled him like a mighty tree. He'd been pushing it away for so long it was really only a matter of time before it raised its ugly head to finally claim him.

It was guilt.

~*~*~

The first sensation she was aware of was the act of inhaling. Claire took one huge, long pull of air and held it – it tingled everywhere as if her body was reacting to oxygen for the first time. She released it slowly and opened her eyes. Everything was blurry, as if her eyes were gooey. She tried to reach up and rub them but found she couldn't move her arms. And then there was _him_, peering down at her, slowly coming into focus…

"Why…" she croaked, "… why can't I move my arms…"

"Because you haven't _got_ any yet." He walked away.

What she didn't know was that at the time she was nothing more than a head, a neck, one shoulder, a spine, a rib cage, one heart, and two lungs resting on a cookie sheet on the kitchen table.

"Gabriel..." she called, finding her voice lacked volume without a diaphragm. "Gabe..."

He leaned back into her view, but this time he was much clearer. His arms were crossed and he was sullen.

"You... missed," she said.

He rolled his eyes in response and walked away again. She could hear a commotion kick up from his direction.

"I did _not_ miss."

"I'm supposed to be _dead_." There was a loud bang then he was with her again, picking her up. He gave her a good shake as he pointed her toward the mess in the living room. She gagged at the sight of her own diced remains out of reflex - if she'd had a proper stomach she'd have thrown up.

"I'm not so stupid I don't know when I'm being coerced," he said. "You are, in fact, as dead as you wanna be. All I've done is give you a way to change your mind."

He set her back down and disappeared again. Claire heard something shatter, two somethings, three... like glass.

"What are you _doing_?"

"Making it look like a struggle, and shouldn't you be _concentrating_ on, like, I dunno, say, growing a _liver_ or something? Something _quiet_?"

Growing a _liver_? Right. He'd chopped her to bits all the way up to her chin. She tried not to think of the itch on her nose. She tried not to feel her bones stretching as they grew. She tried not to think of growing another _useless_ womb… and not saying goodbye to her family…

"Gabe…" she whispered. She heard another crash and he loomed over her again.

"_What_?!?"

She parted her lips but couldn't find any words to express…

He looked angry, hurt, and impatient. It was painfully obvious he was still quaking with discomfort over the whole situation, under the surface. His jaw worked and his nostrils flared – he fumed as he stared at her, waiting for her answer. She returned his gaze full of sincere apology, full of an equal amount of hurt, full of desolation and deep despair. He softened around the edges and averted his eyes, mutely nodding before moving off to continue his task.

"Gotta get stuff, I'll be back soon. I wanna see at least one kidney by the time I get back."

An undeterminable amount of time later she awoke (she'd fallen asleep?) to the overpowering smell of gasoline. She had been moved to the couch and wrapped in a sheet… and joy of joys, she had arms. _And_ legs. She sat up and the sheet fell away. The skin that covered her body was a strange whitish pink – the kind that lives under scabs or makes up scars, signifying a state of healing. She quickly clutched the sheet to her chest when Sylar entered the room, carrying a packed duffel and backpack. He tossed a separate bundle into her lap.

"Here, get dressed. It's time to fake your death," he said evenly, without sparing her a glance. Picking up a red gas can, he marched into the kitchen where he loudly began sloshing the substance over every conceivable surface.

Twenty minutes later they both stood outside staring up at the apartment building, shivering in the freezing wintertime darkness, shoulder to shoulder in a weird but comfortable silence, their breath mingling in foggy clouds. They watched with reverent finality as the first puff of smoke escaped a bedroom window. Soon there would be screaming and fire alarms and sirens and flashing lights and investigators and police reports…

"You know, the whole point of this was that I'd actually _be_ dead, right?" she poked at him.

He folded his hands behind his back as he slowly metered out his response.

"Both of us are gonna walk away with a clean slate, Claire."

"_Clean_? Clean. Okay, sure. Clean. Because grieving the loss of my husband and child _and_ becoming homeless in the middle of winter is so -"

"No one knows you're still alive. You don't ever have to watch another death if you don't want to. You can wander the universe and be who or whatever you want to be. This is the last pain you'll ever have to feel if you don't want to. You can spend eternity being numb."

And there it was, his condescending humor. And the way he saw straight through her like she were made of water. No matter how badly she missed pain, craved that loss of sensation… what she had of it she couldn't wait to get rid of, even if it meant forsaking the ones that still loved her. She felt like a hypocrite.

"Okay, and you then?" she asked. "You lost your taste for blood, just like _that_?"

A shrill ringing broke through the night. Lights flipped on in all directions and flames began to climb up the outside wall of the building. He dropped his hands to hang at his sides, but squared his shoulders and leveled his gaze on the burning windowsill. He was resolute. She knew what he meant to do.

"Sylar, you can't stay here. You can't let them take you – they'll kill you! Capital punishment is alive and well – this is suicide!"

He tipped his head toward her and glared at her incredulously from the corners of his eyes, raising an eyebrow.

"That little weak spot at the base of your skull? I don't exactly have that anymore, which makes me even harder to kill than _you_ are. They're not _able_ to kill me."

"No, but they'll -"

"Lock me up? Toss me in a cell to rot and throw away the key? Imprison me in a place so far underground that not even Molly could ever find me again, let alone an army of shadow people and crazy scientists? And since when did _you_ care?"

He turned to face her and was surprised when she met his eyes with acute understanding and something that resembled affection or respect. He savored the expression for a few moments before he took a gamble and placed the fingers of one hand lightly under her chin. When she didn't bite them off, he continued.

"There's also… something I have to fix, and it's gonna take time."

Then a wondrous thing happened. It was just a small flash, possibly nothing more than a quick movement at the corner of her mouth, but it _happened_ nonetheless. Standing before the backdrop of a towering inferno, hushed by a screaming alarm and panicked voices and haloed by a million icy stars, she had smiled at him. And she'd _meant_ to.

"You'd better get going before any witnesses see you," he begrudgingly killed the moment.

"Yeah," she sighed, shouldering her backpack and picking up her duffel. She reached with one arm, placing a warm, gloved hand on his shoulder, giving it a firm squeeze. She didn't know what to say to her old enemy, so she said nothing at all, not even goodbye. She parted with a final look and then disappeared into the night.

~*~*~

The head detective jerked awake when his phone bellowed at him in the middle of the night. That same thing had happened so many times over the years that his wife didn't even twitch, but still, somehow, he managed to be overcome by the obligatory wave of adrenaline. It was Michelle, his acting partner while Chad was out recovering.

"Rivers, do you know what time it is…?"

"Yessir, but this is important."

Of course it was, it _always_ was when they called at 2:30am. Get on with it already…

"We received a call from the scene of a structure fire in Jersey. Fire originated in an apartment leased under '_Craig and/or Claire Dalton_'. Records state the husband as deceased of natural causes several days ago, but we've got a body, sir… a pretty _messed up_ body… of what appears to be a female. The fire obliterated most of what would I.D. her, along with _most_ of the evidence that would've told us what happened, but they were able to find part of her lower jaw…"

He sat up and kicked his legs over the side of the bed, sliding into house-shoes and hunting for his robe.

"Dental records say it's her, huh…" he said, closing the bedroom door behind him, heading toward his study.

"Yes sir."

What a shame. So young. _Forever_ young. Immortal if left to her devices, but certainly not invincible. Incredibly unique.

"But that's not why I'm calling, sir. They've got _our guy_."

He stopped dead in his tracks.

"'_Our guy_'? What do you mean '_they got our guy_'? How exactly did they get '_our guy_'??? Did they call in the National flippin' Guard???"

"I dunno, sir, they just said that since it's a federal case they don't wanna cart him off til you get there."

It sounded too good to be true.

"I'm on my way."

~*~*~

The acrid burn of charred concrete and wood cinders singed his nostrils as he stepped out of the car and onto the scene. It was almost a morbid carnival with flashing lights, crowds of dazed people in blankets, and spraying waterworks. Two officers flanked him as he approached the building, attempting to drag him inside to collect samples from the body. He wasn't a coroner, he wasn't forensics, they didn't need him. He had only one purpose there, having been drug out of bed in the middle of the night to be subjected to the long car ride.

"Where is he," he asked. Everyone in earshot knew who he was referring to.

"This way," one of the officers acquiesced.

A few paces brought him to a squad car – he swallowed when he locked eyes with the very familiar face concealed in the back seat. The last few flames from the building behind him reflected off the glass making his expression difficult to read. He opened the door, yanked up a pant leg, and knelt down on one knee.

He paused a moment to collect his thoughts before asking, "You gonna kill us all?" When he received no response, he continued. "You'd've done so already, huh… unless you were waiting on me. But then, I wasn't exactly chasing you. Hell, I was asleep!" He laughed and dragged a weary hand behind his neck. He sighed. "Nope, I think you killed that poor girl to get my attention. You wanted to _bring_ me here. So what do you want?" He used one finger to lightly tap the handcuffs clamped around Sylar's wrists. "Is _this_ what you wanted?"

Sylar maintained an unnerving silent calm, eyes never leaving the seat in front of him.

"So yer gonna take me up on my offer, eh? Just like that?"

He received a slow, methodical nod.

"Something happen? Figure out you can't run from shadows forever?"

"S'part of it."

"Yeah? Well now I'm curious. What's the other part?"

"…A cheerleader."

**A/N #2: Wheeee fun fun fun! And now, at last, off into the future!!!**


	13. Continuance

This is just a quick word to tell anyone who has this story on their story alert that continuance will be made in "A Far Distant Future – Volume Two" which has just been created and updated. Thanks a bunch and enjoy!!!!


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